You’ve repeated two-months of Western blots, spent several nights patching, and put your mass spec workhorse to the test uninterrupted for several weekends. You then probably put your data into a polished format with a few (thousand) words. It then probably sat at the bottom of your advisor’s inbox for a few weeks, got a few more edits, and endured a lengthy peer review. One morning an email lands: “Dr. Author: Thank you for… we’ve reviewed your… blah blah… addressing reviewer #2 ¹… your manuscript has been accepted!”

After this moment of glory something that can only be described as magical happens: your barebones 12-point Arial font ugly duckling with figures all the way at the end is transformed into a copyedited swan. During this approximately two-week period, you may have wondered, is there a manuscript black hole somewhere in your advisor’s computer?

This mystery is just one of the many functions of a publisher. (In addition to depositing in PubMed Central, maintaining an online repository of articles, coordinating peer review, etc., etc.) During this mysterious process, your advisor may have also asked you to sign a few documents with legal fine print you absolutely read and understood – this was probably a copyright transfer form or a Creative Commons agreement asking you to sign your life away. After you signed a variant of this form and your advisor paid a large fee,² your polished manuscript became open access… to the whole world (wide web)! Whoa!

Cut the fake(ish) news, real news now

In September 2018, a consortium of European funding organizations – including Science Europe – formed cOAlition S with the goal of transitioning all research published by grantees to fully open access.³ This initiative, dubbed “Plan S,” requires grantees of all Plan S funders to publish the results of their research in open access journals (e.g., PLOS One) starting in January 2021 – one of the “10 Principles” of the plan. In the US, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has indicated that their grantees will abide by the 10 Principles. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health have not indicated that they will sign on to Plan S; however, this could change.

While meritorious in intent, Plan S includes significant fine print – particularly in the realm of publishing compliance – that extends beyond publishing and into the inner workings of scientific societies.

Why are you telling me about this?

Currently, ASPET is the home of three primary research journals (The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Molecular Pharmacology, and Drug Metabolism and Disposition) and one review journal (Pharmacological Reviews).⁴ When you submit a paper to any of these journals, you have the option of publishing it as open access – this entails paying for a Creative Commons license to cover the cost of publishing, a.k.a., the legal forms your advisor asked you to sign but you didn’t read before your manuscript finally appeared on PubMed Central. Think of this as being paid up front by the authors in lieu of subscription charges to readers.⁵

All ASPET journals (except PR&P) are “hybrid” journals – this means that you can opt to publish open access. It’s up to your PI… and the funding agency you did the work under to some extent. The problem here is that, under Plan S, hybrid journals will not be compliant, even if the work being funded is published using an open access option. ASPET’s primary research journals may be compliant because ASPET makes the manuscript version freely accessible immediately at acceptance. Revised guidance from Plan S issued in May indicates that ASPET’s “Fast Forward” articles may be acceptable. However, Plan S funders will not pay open access fees for these papers. And, there are still technicalities to work out to meet the revised requirements.

Let’s make it clear – ASPET does not discourage publishing open access. However, many European investigators publish in ASPET journals, and should Plan S make its way into major funders (like NIH and NSF), then ASPET journals could experience a drastic decrease in submissions… which leads to a decrease in readership… and ultimately a decrease in subscriptions.

How does this affect you?

If you’ve been raised in the pharmacology family, you’ve likely attended a few ASPET meetings over the past few years. You may recall the graduate student/postdoc colloquium⁶ and the mandatory business meeting afterward. Why did you sit through this? Likely because you received a travel award – ASPET is quite liberal in awarding these to trainees! Or you were part of the Mentoring Network/Washington Fellows/etc. You may also recall the budget pie chart for ASPET – a large (read: enormous) portion of total revenue is derived from journal subscriptions and page charges. Take home message: journal revenue is critical to the financial liquidity of ASPET and without a strong revenue, all the perks for trainees would certainly suffer.

What is ASPET doing about this?

Again, remember that ASPET does not oppose publishing in open access. Rather, the effect of Plan S on hybrid journals could diminish the services that ASPET consistently delivers to its members and trainees. As many scientific societies stand to be impacted, ASPET signed onto a response letter with other societies that may have influenced the revised Plan S implementation guidance.⁷

Finally, although we are young, it is important to recognize that one day we will be the Eddie Morgan’s/Lynn Wecker’s/JJ Abel’s/etc. running the show alongside the colleagues with whom we once sat at the pharmacology kids table. Our society has invested heavily in us – it is worth taking responsibility to maintain this network. One way to give back is to continue supporting ASPET journals (when appropriate, of course!) Review manuscripts – it’s good for you and good for the journals.⁸ If your institution is somewhat small, encourage your librarian to subscribe to ASPET journals – you’ll need access to these papers, and you might make a friend! Additionally, use your voice politically – let your legislators know how Plan S affects you, should it make its way to Washington. Lastly, we do not want to forcefully sway your beliefs regarding open access, but hope that you will take note of the important nuances surrounding policy issues like Plan S.

Don’t want to take my word? Read more from the Scholarly Kitchen.

• Plan S Impact on Publishers
• Plan S: A Mandate for Gold OA with Lots of Strings Attached
  
• Why Society and Not-For-Profit Journals Are Worth Preserving: Better Economic and Continuing Value for the Community

Footnotes

1. Such a jerk.
2. And your department administrator reminded your boss that s/he needs to stop overdrawing from that ancient pilot grant for publication charges.
3. Why Plan S?
4. In addition to Pharmacology Research & Perspectives, a joint British Pharmacological Society-ASPET venture. Here’s a shameless advertisement for the Early Career Researches Themed Issue.
5. Yes, this is actually a thing, papers don’t just magically appear when you login with your institution credentials. Your librarian gets money from your institution to pay this for the whole institution so you don’t have to worry about subscribing to individual journals. See, they don’t just sit behind a large desk and “shhhhh” you! However, open access Author Publication Charges would have to be more than $5,600 per article to replace income currently generated by ASPET’s journals.
6. Basically the pharmacology kids table.
7. Joint Society Response to Plan S
8. More on this in a later blog post!