Plan S and Purpose: The future direction for UK learned societies

Change may be the only constant, but as COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on research, education, work and every other corner of our lives, the macro trends affecting publishers – the transition to open access, the growth of preprints, the ongoing diversification and internationalisation of research (Baker 2020) – have also been impacted.

The impact on these trends have not left learned societies unaffected but we currently have little systematic understanding the impact of COVID-19 on UK societies (Inge 2020, Parry-Giles 2021), their members and activities and how that has affected their considerations around, or responses to, revenue diversification, increasing use of preprints, and the rise of open access, Plan S and COAlition S. Our findings indicate that in the short term UK societies are more concerned with revenue income from buildings and events than the transition to open access.