Subscribe to Open

Subscribe to Open is a sustainable and equitable approach to transitioning subscription-based journals into open access, one year at a time. It utilizes existing library relationships and subscription processes, without imposing any publication fees on authors.

Subscribe to Open was developed by the US-based publisher Annual Reviews in 2019. Since then, an increasing number of publishers and libraries have embraced S2O and come together in the Community of Practice.

Under the S2O model, subscribers are offered continued access to their subscribed titles through the standard renewal process. When enough subscriptions are renewed, the journal is moved to OA for that year. This means that the content of that year becomes openly accessible under a creative commons license, available for everyone to read, and with no charges for authors.

The following year, subscribers are once again given the chance to renew via the normal renewal processes. If enough subscribers choose to renew, the journal maintains its open access status for another year.

However, if this threshold is not met then the content from that year remains behind the paywall. This mechanism serves to ensure the journal's long-term funding and economic sustainability within the realm of open access.

Subscribe to Open enables the open access transition of academic journals with full transparency, little disruption, and no additional costs. The model represents a fair and equal approach to transformation since all authors can publish in the journal of their choice, irrespective of whether their affiliated institution has funding for OA publishing.

Subscribe to Open offers advantages for all parties in scholarly publishing:

• Authors can publish their articles open access, free of charge, eliminating the need for author processing fees (APCs) and ensuring full compliance with open access mandates.
• Libraries retain guaranteed access to the journal and its backfiles. In addition, they support the open access transformation without any additional administrative effort and in a cost-neutral way.

• Booksellers and subscription agents continue to organize journal subscriptions for their customers in the usual way and therefore, unlike in the APC-funded open access transformation models like Publish & Read, remain important players in the academic publishing system.
• The research community benefits from a broad dissemination of scholarship both within and beyond the academic environment.

In essence, Subscribe to Open serves as a catalyst for a more inclusive and accessible scholarly landscape, benefiting authors, libraries, booksellers, and the research community alike.

By renewing your subscription, be it in print or digital format, you support the model and facilitate the successful transition to open access.

If you have not yet subscribed to one of the journals and wish to support the transformation, please contact your regional sales manager.

Only the continuation of your subscription will guarantee access to the journal. As additional benefit for continued support, online subscribers are granted with complimentary access to the journal archive.

By continuing the support of the journal, you contribute to the opening of the publishing ecosystem and reaffirm a commitment to open access in a cost-neutral way while increasing the impact for your researchers.

To ensure long-term financial sustainability, a minimum number of subscriptions must be reached for each volume to transition to open access.

Should an insufficient number of subscribers choose to support the Subscribe to Open model for the participating journal, the paywall will be reactivated. This implies that the current year’s content will remain restricted, with access limited exclusively to existing subscribers. In this case, authors can comply with open access mandates using the green route.

Yes, if you subscribe to a collection or journal package that includes the journals, you support the Subscribe to Open project and hence the open access transformation of the journals.

The conditions of your agreement remain unchanged.

We discuss the inclusion and support of Subscribe to Open in existing agreements with our customers.

Unlike APC-funded open access and transformation models like Publish & Read, Subscribe to Open allows you to continue to organize journal subscriptions for your customers and hence maintain your business.

As there are no author-facing open access publishing fees, Subscribe to Open ensures that all authors can publish open access, irrespective of their own financial resources or their institution's funding. This enables their work to reach a broader readership, thereby enhancing its visibility, reach, and overall impact. The initial analyses of our journals already running under the S2O model indicate that the OA articles published receive up to 7 times higher usage than the articles that were published behind the paywall and the number of countries from which content is accessed has grown massively.

The most effective step you can take is to request your librarian to subscribe to our S2O journals.

No, Subscribe to Open does not rely on author-facing charges.

Information on the submission process can be found on the individual journal's page in the "Submit" section or in the Supplementary Material (Overview section).

If the open access transformation is successful, a Creative Commons 4.0 license will be assigned. Information on the individual licenses that are used can be found on the webpages of the respective journals.

Our experience with the S2O model has yielded positive outcomes thus far, giving us confidence in continued subscriber support for the S2O model, which, in turn, facilitates the gold open access publication of your article. Nonetheless, it's important to note that the S2O model does not guarantee gold open access. If the S2O target is not met, and your article cannot be published under gold open access, our policies still permit compliance with open access mandates through the alternative Green OA pathway.

Yes, if the journal currently has a print edition, it will be maintained.

No, the shift to Subscribe to Open does not entail any alterations to the setup of your journal. The sole change is that it would enable open access publishing for all authors if the transition to Subscribe to Open is successful.

We would be pleased to discuss with you if S2O could be a suitable model for your journal and the advantages that open access can offer to the communities you serve. Please feel free to reach out to your contact in Journal Management.