The world of scientific publishing has been invigorated and challenged by a variety of new proposals and initiatives over the past few years. With each new model for the publishing process, there have been opportunities to reimagine the future of research articles and journals. However, without a deadline for when the future begins, systematic change has been slow in coming.Enter the Plan S coalition, which has presented the scientific publishing community with just that deadline. Without a doubt, this group has shaken up the world of science publishing. And that is exactly the intention. Plan S (https://www.coalition-s.org) is an initiative put forth by a consortium of funding agencies, mostly in Europe, to require that all research results that were supported by these agencies be published with full and immediate open access, among other aspects. Full open access would mean that no fees or subscriptions would be required to read final published articles. Plan S is proposed to start on January 1, 2020.We as editors of the three journals published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB)--Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), Journal of Lipid Research (JLR), and Molecular & Cellular Proteomics (MCP)--would like to communicate to our scientific communities that we support any and all efforts to make scientific advances readily and rapidly available to scientists. Indeed, JBC, JLR, and MCP have acted according to this fundamental creed for the past 20 years, making accepted manuscripts in our journals immediately available at no cost via our `Papers in...
|