Plan S in Latin America: A Precautionary Note

Abstract

<jats:p>Background Latin America has historically led a vital and open access movement and leads the worldwide region with the adoption of wider open access practices. Argentina has expressed its commitment to join Plan S, an initiative from a European consortium of research funders with a mandate to promote the open access publishing of scientific outputs.&#x0D; Analysis This opinion article suggests that the potential adhesion of Argentina or other Latin American nations to Plan S ignores the reality and tradition of Latin American open access publishing.&#x0D; Conclusion and implications Plan S must demonstrate that it will encourage at a regional and global level the advancement of non-commercial open access initiatives. Latin America should invest and promote open nonprofit scholarly-led infrastructures, allowing the academy to regain control of scholarly communications.&#x0D; Keywords Plan S; Latin America; Open access publishingContexte Historiquement, l’Amérique latine a été un chef de file dans le mouvement pour fournir un accès aux communications savantes qui soit vital et ouvert. Aujourd’hui, ce continent demeure un leader mondial en adoptant des pratiques de libre accès qui sont plus englobantes. L’Argentine, notamment, a manifesté son engagement pour se joindre au Plan S, lequel est l’oeuvre d’un collectif de bailleurs de fonds européens dont le mandat est de promouvoir l’édition de recherches scientifiques à libre accès.&#x0D; Analyse Cet article d’opinion suggère que l’adhésion potentielle au Plan S par l’Argentine ou d’autres pays latino-américains ignore la réalité et l’histoire de l’édition à libre accès latino-américaine.&#x0D; Conclusion et implications Le Plan S doit démontrer qu’il encouragera des initiatives non-commerciales envers le libre accès à un niveau régional et mondial. L’Amérique latine doit investir dans des infrastructures sans but lucratif qui soient ouvertes et menées par des universitaires, de manière à permettre à ceux-ci de reprendre le contrôle sur les communications savantes.&#x0D; Mots clés Plan S; Amérique latine; Édition à libre accès</jats:p>

La importancia del financiamiento sobre la producción científica en México

“…El Plan S mantiene intacto el monopolio de las grandes editoriales. Asimismo, el modelo basado en "cargos por procesamiento de artículos" puede alterar el modelo editorial que prima en América Latina (libre de costos para el autor y lector), pues las revistas locales pueden optar por un sistema similar basado en el cobro a los autores (Debat y Babini, 2020). Por otra parte, el costo por publicar en acceso abierto puede ser prohibitivo para la mayoría de los investigadores de América Latina (Noorden, 2020), región que tiene problemas recurrentes para invertir de forma suficiente en ciencia y tecnología.…”

Bibliodiversity at the Centre: Decolonizing Open Access

“…All aspects of Latin American open access are based in the scholarly community, from technical infrastructure to capturing research outputs. Plan S, however, threatens existing Latin American open access infrastructure (Debat and Babini, 2020). One response was to call for the South to reject the Eurocentric and unsustainable model of Plan S and strike out on its own (Becerril‐García, 2019).…”

“…Doing (Alperin, 2014: 15-17). Although Latin America has robust platinum open access journal publishing, it also has extensive infrastructure to support discovery and dissemination of all types of content, including bibliographic databases and digital libraries, contributing (Debat and Babini, 2020). One response was to call for the South to reject the Eurocentric and unsustainable model of Plan S and strike out on its own (Becerril-García, 2019).…”

Opening the record of science: making scholarly publishing work for science in the digital era

“…Equally, there are epistemological diversities that reflect differing histories and values that lead to differing priorities and approaches. There is bias in the record of science as represented by indexes such as Web of Science and Scopus which, as noted in section 5.4, are dominated by outputs from the major commercial publishers, all located in Europe or North America, and largely representing science in these regions (Debat and Babini, 2020). The perspective that most scientific advances have been made in the Global North, and that northern priorities are global priorities, can lead to the exclusion of and contempt for knowledge and priorities in other regions (Nkoudou, 2016).…”