Originally published 2016-05-31.
On 27 May 2016, science and innovation ministers of the European Union agreed that scientific papers resulting from publicly funded research should be free for anyone to read by 2020. The goal was a political commitment, not a law, and it was not met on time across Europe. But it set off changes that reshaped academic publishing, most visibly Plan S, launched by research funders in 2018. Today a large share of new research is open access, though how it is paid for remains hotly debated.
What the EU agreed in 2016
The commitment came from the EU's Competitiveness Council, the meeting of ministers responsible for research, innovation, trade and industry, held in Brussels on 26 and 27 May 2016. All member states backed conclusions on the move towards "open science", built around three ideas: sharing knowledge freely, immediate open access to research articles, and reusing research data wherever possible.
The target covered research paid for wholly or partly with public money, which is a large part of what European universities and institutes produce. Privately funded research was not bound by it, although advocates hoped it would follow. A Council spokesperson summed up its status plainly: "This is not a law, but it's a political orientation for the 28 governments."
The push came largely from the Netherlands, which held the rotating EU presidency in the first half of 2016 and had made open access one of its priorities. Earlier that spring, a Dutch-hosted conference in Amsterdam produced the "Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science", which first set out the 2020 goal. Dutch State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker had already announced in 2013 that the Netherlands wanted all Dutch research output to be open access by 2024. After the Council meeting he declared: "The time for talking about Open Access is now past."
Why access to research matters
For decades, most scientific papers have been published in subscription journals. Universities pay large fees for access, and anyone without an institutional login, from a patient reading about their illness to a small business, a journalist or a teacher, often faces a paywall of around 30 to 40 US dollars per article. Since a great deal of that research is funded by taxpayers, critics argue the public ends up paying twice: once for the research and again to read it.
Open access also matters for science itself. Studies have repeatedly found that openly available papers tend to be cited more than comparable paywalled ones, although the size of that advantage varies by field and is still debated. Free access makes it easier for researchers in poorer countries to keep up with their fields, and for others to check, reuse and build on results. The scale of unauthorised sharing through sites such as Sci-Hub has shown how strong the demand for access is.
The 2016 conclusions also touched on embargoes, the delays some journals impose before work can be shared freely, and on research data, which is often just as valuable as the paper itself.
Gold, green and other routes to open access
"Open access" covers several different models, and the differences explain most of the arguments that followed:
- Gold: the journal publishes the article free to read, usually under a Creative Commons licence. Many gold journals charge authors an article processing charge (APC), typically around 1,000 to 3,000 US dollars and sometimes far more.
- Green: the author deposits a version of the paper, often the accepted manuscript, in a free repository. This costs authors nothing, but publishers may impose an embargo.
- Hybrid: a subscription journal makes individual articles free when a fee is paid, which critics call "double dipping" because libraries still pay subscriptions.
- Diamond: free for both readers and authors, funded by institutions, societies or grants.
The Netherlands strongly favoured gold open access at the time, while longtime advocates such as cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad argued that green self-archiving was the cheaper and faster route. That disagreement over who pays shaped every later policy.
A broader fight over science and politics
The open access debate sits inside a wider question about how political decisions shape science, from funding cuts to which research the public can see. The video below, from the YouTube science channel AsapSCIENCE, argues that science should be treated as a voting issue, using examples from Canada and the United States.
From pledge to Plan S
By 2018 it was clear that the 2020 target would not be met on goodwill alone. On 4 September 2018 a group of national research funders, under the name cOAlition S and backed by the European Commission, launched Plan S. Its core rule was that research they funded must be published openly, in open access journals or platforms or in open repositories without embargo. Hybrid journals did not count unless they were covered by a "transformative agreement" committing them to move to full open access.
Plan S originally aimed for 2020, but the start date was pushed to 2021 after objections from publishers and some researchers. Critics, including the publisher of Science and a group of more than 1,700 researchers who signed an open letter, warned about restricted choice of journals, costs and academic freedom. Supporters saw it as the first policy with real consequences for non-compliance. Coalition members later included funders outside Europe, such as the Gates Foundation, while the European Research Council withdrew its support in 2020.
The EU's own research programme, Horizon Europe, went on to require immediate open access for the publications it funds. In 2023, EU ministers went further and recommended moving towards not-for-profit, no-fee publishing models for research, an idea welcomed by many academics and criticised by publishers as lacking funding details.
Where things stand now
The 2020 promise was not fully kept, but the direction has held. A Scopus analysis published in 2024 found that about 46% of works published in 2023 were available in some form of open access, compared with less than a quarter of new papers being immediately open when the EU pledge was made. The question has shifted from whether research should be open to who should pay for it: authors through fees, institutions through deals with publishers, or public funding for non-profit platforms.
For readers, the practical upshot is good news. Many papers that once sat behind paywalls can now be found legally and free of charge. Search a paper's title in Google Scholar and look for a "PDF" or "All versions" link, check university repositories and preprint servers such as arXiv, or use a browser extension like Unpaywall that points to legal free copies. If all else fails, emailing the author politely usually works: most researchers are happy to share their work.
The 2016 meeting did not make all science free overnight. What it did was put Europe's governments on record that publicly funded knowledge belongs to the public, and that idea has been very hard to walk back.
Sources: Science: EU urged to free all scientific papers by 2020, Wikipedia: Plan S, Wikipedia: Open access, Futurism, ScienceAlert (original reports).
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