Mark Purvis – Blue Zulu Marketing | Marketing consultants

The Evolution of Plan S: As mentioned in the last blog, I was recently asked to speak at the ISMT E North American conference on the evolution of the Plan S. In preparing my talk it seemed remarkable to reflect that only 23 months had passed since Robert-Jan Smits and Marc Schiltz launched Plan S and arguably changed the course of scholarly communication forever.

Since that first announcement we have had periods of reaction, rebellion, consultation, clarification, concession and retrenchment. The most important evolution for many has been the delay of the start to 2021 although that still hasn’t been a long enough delay to allow all the funders to get their policies aligned, indeed the UKRI’s open access policy review is still in progress with only months to go before Plan S is due to start.

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Earlier this month, I was honoured to be asked to speak at a plenary session of the North American conference of the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors. A later blog post will reflect on the content of my talk, an update on the evolution of Plan S, but I thought it might be of interest to reflect on the experience of participating in a virtual conference – the new norm in our COVID-19 world – from the perspective of a speaker.

You would think the preparation and run up to the conference would be much the same as any event, with the added advantage of no flight or hotel bookings to make. In practice there is a bit more work to do over and above the usual registering of author details and writing a talk.

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