It’s International Open Access Week, a time when the scholarly community comes together to promote and discuss Open Access (OA). In this spirit, I’m here to tell you about an innovative way that scholarly publishers are enabling fee-free OA article publishing!
The Subscribe to Open (S2O) publishing model allows all authors – anywhere in the world – to publish OA articles for free, as long as a journal has met its annual funding target. Publishers convert their journals from “closed”, where a subscription is required to read their content, to “open” on an annual basis. As long as institutions, like the Columbia University Libraries, continue their current journal subscriptions, each year’s content is made OA so that the entire world can read it for free. Because this publishing model leverages existing subscription fees, converting to OA is possible without charging authors Article Processing Charges (APCs). Thus, all authors, everywhere, regardless of whether their institution subscribes to the journal, can publish their articles OA for free!
The Columbia University Libraries support many S2O journals and publishers. You can find a list of the S2O journals on our Open Access Publishing Agreements page under Subscribe to Open (S2O) Publishing Agreements. Pro tip – even if Columbia University Libraries doesn’t subscribe to an S2O journal, you can still publish in it for free! Check out this list of S2O journals or this list of S2O publishers to discover all S2O publishing opportunities.
I’m a huge fan of S2O – it’s equitable, enabling authors across the world to publish OA for free, and it’s sustainable. Libraries don’t need to pay thousands of dollars beyond their traditional subscription costs and authors don’t need to pay costly APCs. In fact, I am an active member of the Subscribe to Open Community of Practice (S2O CoP), a non-profit organization that aims to build consensus around S2O as a sustainable mechanism for delivering Open Access. If you’re curious about S2O, please join us, or read about S2O on our website! Membership is open to everyone who has an interest in making scholarly communication freely available to all for public benefit. We welcome librarians, scholarly publishers, funders, scholars, and other stakeholders from all countries. Plus, we are a fun bunch! I’ve made some good friends and have enjoyed presenting about S2O alongside new colleagues at conferences (see below).
Brooks, K., DiDomenico, J., Queen, W. & Will, L. (2024, June 11-13). Subscribe to Open: An Introduction to an Innovative Open Access Model [Panel presentation]. Annual Meeting of the Association of University Presses, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Brooks, K., Burke, S., Celano, D., Steiner, K. & Will, L. (2024, March 4-6). Walk a mile in my shoes…or wear yours, if you’d like: OA journal transformation considerations for publishers of varying types [Panel presentation]. Electronic Resources & Libraries: Camp ER&L, Austin, TX.
Brooks, K., Lopez, A., Pop, A., Shaw, S. & Queen, W. (2023, November 7-10). Subscribe to Open: The Challenges and Successes of an Innovative Model for Open Access [Panel presentation]. The Charleston Conference: Let the Good Times Roll!, Charleston, SC.
Brooks, K., Klein Pope, B., Tranchell, S. & Lee, Y.. (2023, November 7-10). S2O Misperceptions, Challenges and Learnings [Panel presentation]. The Charleston Conference: Let the Good Times Roll!, Charleston, SC.
Brooks, K., Lopez, A., Pop, A., Shaw, S. & Queen, W. (2023, March 5-8). Subscribe to Open: The Challenges and Successes of an Innovative Model for Open Access [Panel presentation]. Electronic Resources & Libraries: Camp ER&L, Austin, TX.