The leadership of cOAlition S has the complex and unenviable task of stewarding a central set of policies that are unevenly adopted across the cOAlition membership and that at times interact in unexpected ways. Publishers, authors, librarians, and even the funders themselves struggle to articulate their interpretations of these policies and communicate clearly with other stakeholder groups. Over the past months, the policy documents related to Plan S have continued to grow in number as have the tools and resources for making sense of these documents. But, even these have not been enough.
That representatives of the cOAlition have taken to adding a standard disclaimer when they speak that, “if there is any discrepancy between information presented at this presentation and the cOAlition S website, the website takes precedence” is evidence of the complexity. To be clear, I think this is a useful disclaimer because on more than one occasion such discrepancies have occurred and so it is important that all know which are the canonical texts.
The Rights Retention Strategy is perhaps one of the most complicated pieces of the cOAlition’s policy regime. Unpacking each word — rights, retention, and strategy — is one approach to better understanding what this policy is and how it functions within the Plan S compliance framework overall.
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