The information provided by the Journal Checker Tool represents cOAlition S’s current understanding in relation to the policies of the journals contained within it. We will endeavour to keep it up to date and accurate, but we do not accept any liability in relation to any errors or omissions.
This tool is delivered by Cottage Labs on behalf of cOAlition S. If you believe that there is an error in the result given by the tool or how the tool is functioning please use this form. We will respond within working 3 days.
Plan S aims for full and immediate Open Access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications from research funded by public and private grants. cOAlition S is the coalition of research funding and performing organisations that have committed to implementing Plan S. The goal of cOAlition S is to accelerate the transition to a scholarly publishing system that is characterised by immediate, free online access to, and largely unrestricted use and re-use (full Open Access) of scholarly publications.
The Journal Checker Tool enables researchers to check whether they can comply with their funders Plan S aligned OA policy based on the combination of journal, funder(s) and the institution(s) affiliated with the research to be published. The tool currently only identifies routes to open access compliance for Plan S aligned policies.
This is a cOAlition S project.
Consult your institution’s library prior to submitting to this journal.
Transformative agreements may have eligibility criteria or limits on publication numbers in place that the Journal Checker Tool is currently not able to check.
A common eligibility criterion is that the corresponding author of the article must be at an institution subscribing to the transformative agreement for the paper (determined via the use of an institutional email address). If you are not the corresponding author, please repeat your search with the corresponding author’s insitution to help validate the article’s eligibility.
A Transformative Journal is a subscription/hybrid journal that is committed to transitioning to a fully OA journal. It must gradually increase the share of OA content and offset subscription income from payments for publishing services (to avoid double payments).
Check whether your funder supports the payment of fair and reasonable APCs in Transformative Journals here.
Self-archiving is sometimes referred to as green open access.
Publish your article via the journals standard route and do not select any open access option (your funder may not cover the cost if you do and it does not enable compliance). Following acceptance of your peer reviewed manuscript, deposit the full text version of the author accepted manuscript (the version that includes changes requested by peer-reviewers) to a repository without embargo and under a CC BY licence. Your funder may require you to archive your article in a specific repository.
cOAlition S has developed a Rights Retention Strategy to give researchers supported by a cOAlition S Funder the freedom to publish in their journal of choice, including subscription journals, whilst remaining fully compliant with Plan S. More information on how to use it is available here.
The Version of Record (VoR) is different from the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM). The AAM is the version accepted for publication, including all changes made during peer review. The VoR contains all the changes from the copyediting process, journal formatting/branding etc., but it is also the version maintained and curated by the publisher, who has the responsibility to ensure that any corrections or retractions are applied in a timely and consistent way.
For these reasons, the preferred option is to ensure that the VoR is made Open Access. Where the VoR can be made available in accordance with the Plan S principles, and there is a cost, many cOAlition S Organisations make funding available to cover these costs.