cOAlition S was launched in September 2018 as an initiative to improve Open Access publishing, the organization is built around Plan S and the central tenet is simple:
“With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”
In addition to the above tenet there are a series of quality and transparency guidelines to be considered compliant of Plan S. As a pioneering Open Access publisher with over 20 years of experience, JMIR Publications is committed to adhering to these principles and guidelines. The below tables are populated using the relevant Plan S criteria from their website on the left, and our compliance on the right
Requirements for Publication Venues
Common requirements for all publication venues
Basic mandatory conditions for all publication venues:
| Plan S Criteria | JMIR Publications Compliance |
| cOAlition S emphasizes the need for high-quality journals, therefore requiring journals/platforms to have a solid system in place for review according to the standards within the relevant discipline and guided by the core practices and policies outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Details must be openly available on the respective journal and platform websites. In particular, payment of publication fees or waiver status must not in any way influence the editorial decision-making process on the acceptance of a paper. |
What does the peer-review process at JMIR journals look like? |
| The journal/platform must provide, on its website, a detailed description of its editorial policies and decision-making processes. In addition, at least basic statistics must be published annually, covering in particular the number of submissions, the number of reviews requested, the number of reviews received, the approval rate, and the average time between submission and publication. |
The Editorial Policies for each journal are clearly laid out on each journal's page, e.g. for the Journal of Medical Internet Research What is your turnaround time? How can authors speed up the decision making process? Statistics reporting is available on request once Plan S provides more detailed technical guidance on how for example "approval rate" should be calculated (as there are many different ways of calculating acceptance rates). |
| The journal/platform must accept the retention of copyright by the authors or their institutions, at no extra cost. Licenses to publish must preserve the right and responsibility of the author/institution to make the VoR or the AAM of the article Open Access immediately upon publication, under an open license as defined in Part II Section 2 above. |
JMIR Publications currently only publishes under the open access model. Is everything in JMIR journals open access, and what does open access mean? |
| The journal/platform must either enable authors to publish with immediate and permanent Open Access (without any kind of technical or other form of obstacles) under an open license as defined in Part II Section 2 above, or to deposit the AAM or VoR in an Open Access repository at no extra cost and under an open license as defined in Part II Section 2 above. In either case, no embargo period can be applied (including for early view versions, i.e., online VoR before inclusion in an issue). |
JMIR Publications currently only publishes under the open access model. Is everything in JMIR journals open access, and what does open access mean? |
Mandatory technical conditions for all publication venues:
| Plan S Criteria | JMIR Publications Compliance |
| Use of persistent identifiers (PIDs) for scholarly publications (with versioning, for example, in case of revisions), such as DOI (preferable), URN, or Handle. |
We assign a DOI to all articles and preprints. |
| Deposition of content with a long-term digital preservation or archiving programme (such as CLOCKSS, Portico, or equivalent). | All of our journals are archived in PubMed Central, see Is your journal in PubMed / PubMed Central? |
| High-quality article level metadata in standard interoperable non-proprietary format, under a CC0 public domain dedication. Metadata must include complete and reliable information on funding provided by cOAlition S funders (including as a minimum the name of the funder and the grant number/identifier). | - XML is accessible for every article we publish. |
| Machine-readable information on the Open Access status and the license embedded in the article, in standard non-proprietary format. | - XML is accessible for every article we publish. |
Strongly recommended additional criteria for all publication venues:
| Plan S Criteria | JMIR Publications Compliance |
| Support for PIDs for authors (e.g., ORCID), funders, funding programmes and grants, institutions, and other relevant entities. |
An ORCID is mandatory to publish with us. What is an ORCID, why is it mandatory to have one, and how can I get one? |
| Registering the self-archiving policy of the venue in SHERPA/RoMEO. | Our policies are registered here: SHERPA/RoMEO |
| Availability for download of full text for all publications (including supplementary text and data) in a machine-readable community standard format such as JATS XML. | All JMIR publications are in XML format. |
| Direct deposition of publications (in a machine-readable community standard format such as JATS XML, and including complete metadata as described above) by the publisher into author designated or centralised Open Access repositories that fulfil the Plan S criteria. | All of our journals are archived in PubMed Central, see Is your journal in PubMed / PubMed Central? |
| OpenAIRE compliance of the metadata. | This is currently under development. |
| Linking to data, code, and other research outputs that underlie the publication and are available in external repositories. |
We encourage all authors to make data and other material available on our platform (including in JMIR Data) or in a publicly available repository. |
| Openly accessible data on citations according to the standards by the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). | JMIR is a participating publisher in I4OC and uses Crossref's Cited-by. |
Specific conditions applicable to Open Access journals and Open Access publishing platforms
In addition, the following criteria are required:
| Plan S Criteria | JMIR Publications Compliance |
| The journal/platform must be registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or in the process of being registered. |
JMIR journals are all DOAJ registered once they are accepted in Pubmed Central (because archiving in PMC is a requirement for DOAJ acceptance). |
| Open Access journals must not have a mirror/sister subscription journal with substantial overlap in editorial board to avoid business models charging for both access and publication. Such journals will de facto be considered ‘hybrid’ journals. | All of our journals are open access and free from subscription fees. |
| Transparent costing and pricing: information on the publishing costs and on any other factors impacting the publication fees must be openly available on the journal website/publishing platform (see also Part II Section 5 above). |
Fees are available on each individual journal page, e.g. JMIR mHealth and uHealth. Costs for all of our journals are listed here so comparisons can be made easily. Changes in fees are also listed for transparency. Are there costs involved in publishing in JMIR journals, what are your fees? |
| The journal/platform must provide APC waivers for authors from low-income economies and discounts for authors from lower middle-income economies, as well as waivers and discounts for other authors with demonstrable needs. Waiver policies must be described clearly on the journal website/platform and statistics on waivers requested and granted must be provided. |
Information about an author's inability to pay our fees and waivers can be found here: I don't have any grant money - how can I publish in JMIR? Can you waive or discount the fees for me? Our statistics can be found here: |
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