Robert-Jan Smits is pitching the Plan S vision to transform academic publishing to the world’s big science funding bodies. China’s surprise backing is making it harder for funders everywhere to ignore, he says

New Science|Business paper on how Europe can meet fast rising scientific demand for data storage and processing calls for a long-term strategy

Caveats are added to the amendment to the Public Sector Information Directive, to protect "confidentiality" and "legitimate commercial interests.” That may placate universities, research funding agencies and private investors that joined forces to object to the plan

Plan S architects explain how grantees can abide by initiative’s rules by 2020, when the paywalls are due to fall

Former head of Delft University of Technology, Karel Luyben, will set direction for EU’s cloud project, now formally underway on mission to provide access to all publicly funded research

Open access advocates unhappy about ‘lack of transparency’ in pricing for academic journals 

Greater cooperation is needed to address global challenges, but EU bureaucracy and complex rules are undermining scientific partnerships. So will Horizon Europe be more – or less – open to the world?

Eye of the beholder: When it comes to deciding how open research data should be, industry and academia do not have the same vision

Robert-Jan Smits will take up the role of president at the university in March 2019. ‘It’s a kind of homecoming’ he says

The architect of ‘Plan-S’, Robert-Jan Smits, hopes to force a major change in the business model of academic publishers. The effect will be similar to the abolition of mobile phone roaming charges in Europe, he says