Abstract

Plan S is a policy that mandates research papers supported by specific funders such as the European Community be published in open access journals. The funder supports APC to researchers, providing a chance to advance the era of gold open access, and is expected to bring significant changes to the scholarly publishing ecosystem. This study explored the impact of Plan S from the perspective of each stakeholder of the scholarly publishing ecosystem, such as funders, academic societies or publishers, authors, and libraries, through a review of previous studies. In addition, the status of Korean gold open access publishing and position for each stakeholder were identified through the collected data analysis. As a result of the analysis, the share of publishing gold open access journals in Korea was 22%, which was less than 26% worldwide. Korean funding agencies were predicting and preparing for the impact of Plan S. On the other hand, Korean academic societies produce about 70% of all papers, but there are not many open access papers except medicine (51%). The response of the Korean library was not sufficient, and it contrasted with the activities of librarians in the U.S. that actively provide research support services based on the research lifecycle. It was suggested that Korean libraries should also actively try to change the role of librarians; advising researchers to plan open access publishing in grant project applications, consulting on copyrights, and so on. This study identified the background, principles, and impact of Plan S policy that would be effective in 2021 and examined the response situation in Korea. This study is valuable in that it served as the necessary basis for revitalizing the academic publishing ecosystem in Korea.