Unpicking Subscribe to Open | Research Information

"Tricia Miller and Andrea Lopez explain how the model benefits everyone in the scholarly community Subscribe to Open (S2O) is an innovative open access (OA) model, developed by nonprofit publisher Annual Reviews. The way S2O works is that existing institutional customers continue to subscribe to the journals. With sufficient support, every new volume is immediately converted to OA under a Creative Commons license and is available for everyone to read and re-use. If support is insufficient, the paywall is retained. The ethos of the model is “equity”: there are no fees to publish and no barriers to readership, and it can be applied by journals in any field of research. For academic libraries with a commitment to OA, S2O provides them with an opportunity to realize this by immediately converting gated journals to OA. The process is straight-forward, using existing scholarly publishing processes and infrastructures and it follows recommended principles on pricing transparency. S2O relies on the support of institutional subscribers for its success; by simply renewing annual subscriptions or by becoming new subscribers, they support OA.   Virginia Steel, long-time OA advocate, librarian and former chair of the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Steering Committee, said “A model like S2O is something that librarians have been asking for, for many years. That’s why libraries are stepping forward to support S2O as it aligns with their institutional values. It is inspiring them.”   The model benefits everyone in the scholarly community, researchers, funders, educators and reaches beyond it to include the general public...."