The Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI) announced the launch of Plan A today, an international, multi-stakeholder effort to reform the future of scholarly communication. The goals and outputs of this plan are designed to inform and align with UNESCO’s efforts to craft a global recommendation for open science by late 2021.

OSI is the world’s only large-scale, high-level, multi-stakeholder effort focused on developing an inclusive, achievable, sustainable approach to global scholarly communication reform. Developed in partnership with UNESCO, over 400 leaders in scholarly communication have engaged with OSI since 2015, representing 250 institutions from 27 countries and 18 unique stakeholder groups.

OSI’s unique approach has been that changes to research communication be done collaboratively and with thorough consideration. OSI has been committed to gathering facts that inform reform proposals; working on reforms as a unified community; recognizing and appreciating the many different and valid interests and stakeholders; and identifying points of common interest so that we may work together toward common goals and create an open research future that is vibrant, robust and sustainable.

OSI-affiliated experts have assessed, analyzed, scrutinized and debated extensive perspectives and information on open access through conferences, summit meetings, dozens of reports, and thousands of emails.

Plan A synthesizes the significant themes and recommendations that have emerged via these OSI activities. Plan A recommends that the international scholarly communication community begin immediate and significant action to:

1. DISCOVER critical missing pieces of the open scholarship puzzle so we can design open reforms more effectively;
2. DESIGN, build and deploy an array of much need open infrastructure tools to help accelerate the spread and adoption of open scholarship practices;
3. WORK TOGETHER on finding common ground solutions that address key issues and concerns; and
4. REDOUBLE OUR COLLECTIVE EFFORTS to educate and listen to the research community about open solutions, and, in doing so, design solutions that better meet the needs of research.

It is vital to broader society to make research more open, but our approaches must be developed carefully and in close collaboration with each other. In doing so, we will ensure that scholarly research is protected during this transition, and that it is well-served by the outcomes of our efforts.

For questions about Plan A, please contact OSI executive director Glenn Hampson at ghampson@nationalscience.org. For more information about OSI, go to http://osiglobal.org.To sign Plan A, please visit http://Plan-A.world.