Press Release — LIBER Endorses cOAlition S Letter to Publishers
THE HAGUE, 1 March 2022 — LIBER has unanimously supported cOAlition S’ letter to publishers titled, ‘Enabling Open Access: a request to publishers’ requesting publishers to make their policies and contracts more transparent. The letter has, as of the 1st of March 2022, been sent to a large group of publishers — those who have not yet provided adequate clarity to funded authors — requesting that they make their policies and contracts more transparent at the outset.
The letter calls for publishers to ensure that authors are aware, at the point of submission, of the following:
- The licence they will be asked to sign if their manuscript is accepted for publication;
- Any fees which will be levied, if their manuscript is accepted for publication;
- Whether their manuscript will be re-routed to another journal as a result of any prior notice of re-use rights, which is included in the submission.
Alongside the letter, cOAlition S has prepared a response form for the publishers to fill out and the responses will be made available to help inform publishing decisions.
In April last year, LIBER equally supported cOAlition S’s open letter to researchers describing the practices of some publishers that cause difficulties for authors wishing to exercise their right to make their AAM open access immediately on publication using the Plan S Rights Retention Strategy. The letter from 2021 highlights practices put in place by select publishers which are not necessarily communicated with authors before the submission stage, and that these publishers do not provide clarity on what action they will take in cases where a researcher wishes to exercise their rights in this way.
Unfortunately, the situation remains largely unchanged, and authors continue to be deprived of the clarity they need at the submission stage of publication to make an informed decision whether to proceed with publication or not.
Read the cOAlition S letter to publishers here. You can also support this letter by retweeting this message below.
.@cOAlitionS_OA calls publishers to make their #OpenAccess submission policies, workflows and contracts more transparent for authors at the outset of the process, and thus, help authors meet their pre-existing grant conditions. https://t.co/8KZUoD9HzX#Plan_S #RetainYourRights pic.twitter.com/EKteeRNRTP
— cOAlition S (@cOAlitionS_OA) March 1, 2022
[Photo by Romain Dancre on Unsplash]