Table 1.

Some advantages and disadvantages of Plan S for various stakeholders.

Stakeholder	Advantages	Disadvantages
Individual patients and members of the public	Easy to locate and access results to inform their own health-related decisions or advise friends and family.	Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S.
Patient groups	Empowers PPIa groups to engage in reshaping health care or clinical service delivery and get involved in formulating research questions and in how researchers address these questions.	Will only apply to research funded by members of Coalition S.
Health professionals	Allows health professionals to rapidly access primary or secondary research to answer clinical questions at the point of care and thus deliver more evidence-based care.	Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S.
Guideline development groups and other evidence-based policy developers	Reduces the costs and lowers the barriers to producing evidence-based practice guidelines and incorporating evidence into other policies (eg, for health promotion).	Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S.
Health systems	Lower cost of incorporating evidence-based thinking into the structure and function of the health system.	Will only apply to results of research funded by members of Coalition S.
Researchers carrying out research	Allows more frequent search from the researchers’ desktop of a broader range of literature, thus enhancing multi-disciplinary research and helping researchers stay up to date.	Will only apply to research funded by members of Coalition S, excluding work funded by smaller organizations and unfunded or student research. May even threaten the existence of some academic disciplines, such as health informatics.
Researchers writing articles	Gives greater reassurance that their research will be read.	Will only apply to researchers funded by members of Coalition S.
Research funders	Enhances the uptake of results of the research they fund, reassuring patients and the public that their donations or taxes lead to published results with impact.	Will only apply to research funded by members of Coalition S.
Journal publishers	Widens the readership of some journals to low- and middle-income countries and nonresearchers. Provides a reliable income stream from Coalition S to journals.	Funding from Consortium S will be subject to meeting several requirements, some of which may be challenging. Likely to favor large, established publishers; could add significant barriers to market entry or growth for small or new publishers, ultimately eradicating smaller publishers and society journals.

^aPPI: patient and public involvement.