Plan s and ecosystem of spanish journals of social sciences towards open access: Threats and opportunities

Abstract

Plan S promotes that all articles from research funded by public financing agencies that subscribe it, have to be publicly available immediately, either in open access journals or in repositories that meet certain conditions, as of January 2021. Plan S has been promoted by Science Europe, a group of public research funding agencies through the cOAlition S, and has published two versions that have generated intense academic debate worldwide. Even though no public or private research agency of Spain has been committed at the moment to support Plan S, it is interesting to assess how this Plan can affect the ecosystem of Spanish scientific journals. We present the results of the analysis of the Spanish journals of SCImago Journal Rank in Social Sciences and the compliance that they have with the requirements that cOAlition S has described for the journals to be considered of Open Access of quality. These requirements are related to the opening of the content, the payment model, technical aspects and copyright. It is concluded that although most journals meet the requirements related to open content, they are left with challenges related to the technical aspects of maximum interoperability and reuse. Journals are recommended to take the Plan S as an opportunity and take advantage to carry out a full digital transformation.