SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Plan S is a an initiative that aims at ‘opening up’ access to scientific knowledge by ensuring immediate and cost-free (for the reader) access to scientific knowledge under specified Open Access (OA) principles. While the initiative is guided by evidently good intentions to overcome current obstacles that restrict the quick publication, dissemination and reproduction of scientific research, it is not only informed primarily by a natural sciences perspective, neglecting the humanities and social sciences, but also it does not appear to consider or address the more profound structural inequalities in knowledge production across the world. The essay aims to problematise some of these less often pronounced asymmetries in an effort to shift the attentionof OA advocates to more urgent issues and to evidence the necessity for more subversive remedial strategies.