Friends:
On July 22, 2019, the Scholarly Kitchen blog hosted an article by Brend Pulverer, who served as an editor of the journal Nature, Nature Cell Biology, and other scientific publications listing some concerns raised by the Plan S proposal "Plan S version 2 and the Cost of Quality,"
Pulverer writes that" Replacing the access barrier to readers with another one to authors is not an option for us. Funders need to step in to remove both barriers by paying for selective, high quality publication irrespective of the cost and they must reach across geography and discipline. . . .Setting a cap [on charges to authors for publishing an article] based on average costs implies that charges above the average are solely based on excessive profit expectations, rather than the real costs of high-quality selection and editorial services . . . Plan S has been keen to emphasize support for what it terms quality. Quality requires selectivity, which increases the costs per published paper. Thus, the revised guidance still runs the risk that high-quality publishing will be undermined, while lower selectivity OA [open access] will be supported.. . . ."
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