Publishers and academic libraries share an interest in promoting open access (OA)—free access without use restrictions—to peer reviewed scholarly and scientific journals. Although article processing charges (APCs) have become the prevalent model for funding OA articles, many authors and publishers find APCs unacceptable or unworkable. In many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, the funding available for APCs is quite limited. Article fees are also ill-suited to funding some types of research content, including commissioned review articles and other editorial content, such as book reviews and other content.
Subscribe to Open (S2O) represents an innovative approach to flipping existing subscription journals to open access without the use of APCs. Pioneered by the nonprofit publisher Annual Reviews, the model is now being implemented by a growing number of nonprofit and commercial scholarly publishers worldwide.
We have launched this community of practice to support publishers in implementing S2O, to promote experimentation with variations on the model, and to explain the model to academic libraries, research funders, and others interested in innovative open access approaches. We will use this space to discuss strategies for increasing S2O participation over time, for launching new open access journals, and for adapting S2O to manage participation over time.
We encourage all members of the community—including both publishers and librarians—to contribute to this blog to share experiences, pose questions, and offer their insights about S2O.