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.Author submitted version for published version: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/leap.151