The World Health Organization (WHO) has a joined a group of science research backers who are supporting open access publishing called Plan S. WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said ‘As a young public health researcher in Ethiopia, lack of free access to high-quality science literature was a real frustration to me’. All WHO-backed research work will be required to publish in journals that are free to access, will have less publishing fees and supported by institutions and funders as well. While the Plan S initiative has been supported by many, it is still shrouded in controversy for being ‘too risky’ as this initiative. It was supposed start from 2020 but it has been pushed further to 2021.
