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Will the world embrace Plan S, the radical proposal to mandate open access to science papers?
How far will Plan S spread?
Since the September 2018 launch of the Europe-backed program to mandate immediate open access (OA) to scientific literature, 16 funders in 13 countries have signed on. That's still far shy of Plan S's ambition: to convince the world's major research funders to require immediate OA to all published papers stemming from their grants. Whether it will reach that goal depends in part on details that remain to be settled, including a cap on the author charges that funders will pay for OA publication. But the plan has gained momentum: In December 2018, China stunned many by expressing strong support for Plan S. This month, a national funding agency in Africa is expected to join, possibly followed by a second U.S. funder. Others around the world are considering whether to sign on.
Plan S, scheduled to take effect on 1 January 2020, has drawn support from many scientists, who welcome a shake-up of a publishing system that can generate large profits while keeping taxpayer-funded research results behind paywalls. But publishers (including AAAS, which publishes Science) are concerned, and some scientists worry that Plan S could restrict their choices.
[...] For now, North America is not following suit. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was the first Plan S participant outside Europe, and another private funder may follow. But U.S. federal agencies are sticking to policies developed after a 2013 White House order to make peer-reviewed papers on work they funded freely available within 12 months of publication. "We don't anticipate making any changes to our model," said Brian Hitson of the U.S. Department of Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who directs that agency's public access policy.
Previously: Plan S: Radical Open-Access Science Initiative in Europe
Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation Join "Plan S" Open-Access Initiative
China Backs "Plan S" for Open-Access Research
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 06 2019, @03:41PM
I think this is much less of a concern here than in your Disney scenario. There are three groups to consider here: (1) the funders, who provide research funding to researchers, (2) the researchers, who actually do the research, and (3) the publishers, who are the only ones that profit from holding back access.
In the case of Disney (and other corporations), all three of these groups are basically within the same corporation and managed by the same people. So those deciding what content to create and those creating the content all have a serious interest in protecting the profits from their work.
Scientists and most scholars don't make profits off of their research -- it's just the publishers who are making profits. And the funders are really the ones involved with the current discussion about mandating open-access. Scientific publishing groups may certainly have lobbyists, but they will have little influence over those who fund research (often non-profit organizations, scholarly and humanitarian groups, as well as corporate interests who care about the RESULTS of the research, not the publication of it). Perhaps publisher lobbyists could influence U.S. policy on federal grants, but they have little chance of seriously affecting the vast majority of grant-providing entities.
The only people who may convince the funders to broaden the policy for closed-access will be the actual researchers, who deal directly with them (and who are being squeezed in the middle of proposals like Plan S). But those researchers don't actually get a cut of the profits, so their interest for a lenient policy toward closed-access will mostly only exist when there are barriers to open-access publication (like few journals, fees, etc.). If those obstacles are lessened, most researchers aren't going to argue for closed-access: they generally WANT to disseminate their work as broadly as possible. And then why should a research funding group give a damn about the profits of publishers?