Open Access Ventures

This page is dedicated to sharing the fun and exciting parts of Open Access extending from policy.

Open Access Publishing Terminology

cOAlition S

cOAlition S is an international group of research funders—including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—who are committed to working together to advance open access. They support the implementation of Plan S, which spells out 10 guiding principles for the future of open access publishing. As of January 1, 2021, all members of cOAlition S will require the recipients of their funds to adhere to open access policies.

Plan S

cOAlition S’s set of 10 guiding principles for the future of open access publishing.

Preprints

The foundation encourages the posting of preprints of articles submitted for publication to accelerate the dissemination of the information and data while the article is under peer review. These preprints should be the full manuscript and under a CC BY license. Please see the 2025 Open Access Policy for future requirements regarding preprints.

Rights Retention Strategy

cOAlition S has developed a Rights Retention Strategy to give researchers supported by a cOAlition S Organization the freedom to publish in their journal of choice, including subscription journals, whilst remaining fully compliant with Plan S.

The foundation will be updating its grant conditions before January 2021 with the aim of ensuring that our Funded Developments, and anyone supported/associated with the grant, can publish in any journal they choose and remain fully compliant.

By accepting our grant conditions, grantees agree to make their research articles open access in line with our policy. However, when grant holders submit their articles for publication, they are often asked to sign a publishing agreement that gives away their rights to deposit in an open access repository and to publish under a public copyright – CC BY – license. This makes compliance with our open access policy difficult or impossible.

Under the updated conditions, grantees will automatically apply a CC BY license to all  future  author accepted manuscripts reporting original research supported in whole, or in part, by our grant funding. This will ensure they are compliant with our open access policy.

The approach has been endorsed by cOAlition S funders.

Transformative Arrangements

Transformative arrangements are inclusive of Transformative Journals and Transformative Agreements. The foundation and the other cOAlition S funders are supportive of these arrangements.

A Transformative Journal is a subscription/hybrid journal that has openly committed to transforming to a fully open access journal within a set time period. In addition, it must also gradually increase the share of OA content and offset subscription income from payments for publishing services (to avoid double payments). The foundation will continue to pay reasonable APC and publisher fees for article publication during the transformation period of these journals.

A Transformative Agreement is a negotiated contract between institutions (e.g. libraries, national and regional consortia) and publishers to transform the business model from one based on toll-access (subscription) to one in which publishers have remunerated a fair price for their open access publishing services. The foundation is not currently part of any transformative agreements.

Open Science Projects

The foundation is participating in the worldwide effort to define success in open science, and to establish measurements and partnerships that exemplify how open science can enrich our lives with greater reach and impact.

The Leadership Forum was the first of a multi-step process to develop a ‘toolbox’ of practical and transparent indicators for assessing where and when OS models of collaboration best advance science, innovation and public benefit. This project was inspired by the recent adoption of a broad institution-wide OS policy at the Montreal Neurological Institute (the Neuro), Canada’s leading center for neuroscience research and patient care.

  • Publications associated with this project
    • Report: Defining Success in Open Science outlines the success outcomes defined by the Leadership Forum participants.
    • Gold ER, Ali-Khan SE, Allen L et al. An open toolkit for tracking open science partnership implementation and impact [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. Gates Open Res 2019, 3:1442 (https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.12958.2)
  • AAAS and the foundation entered in a multi-year agreement to enable grantees to publish in the AAS suite of journals, including Science Magazine. For more information about the outcomes, see this joint report.