Perspectives from librarians and publishers
On 26 September 2024, De Gruyter hosted 90 minutes of incredible conversation on how the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model may be the answer to a sustainable transition to open access. The webinar featured a moderator and speakers from Xiamen University, Australian National University, Annual Reviews, AIP Publishing and De Gruyter Brill to explore in detail the ins and outs of the S2O model for an open access future. Access the full recording or read the summary and panel discussion below to understand the perspective of both libraries and publishers.
Welcome
Chen Juan, Deputy University Librarian (Xiamen University), welcomed attendees and kicked off with an opening remark about the nature of open access publishing and evolving subscription paywalls.
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Featured speakers
Richard Gallagher
Annual Reviews
Ben Ashcroft
De Gruyter Brill
Kevin Steiner
AIP Publishing
The motivation
Richard Gallagher relates how, as an open access publisher, Annual Reviews is constantly pondering about whether its content should be opened and made available to everyone. In the early days of the COVID pandemic, Annual Reviews made the decision to open up its content to serve the needs of researchers and students working from home. This experiment led to a surprising result, where downloads of articles went from the usual 200,000 a month to almost 700,000 a month. This really convinced the board that Annual Reviews needed to move to open access.
Ben Ashcroft spoke about the ambition of De Gruyter to switch most of the journals to open access within five years. However, with a predominately humanities and social sciences portfolio, most open access approaches will not lead to the transformation at scale. This is namely due to the lack of open access funding for humanities and social sciences content, as there’s no culture of paying to publish in many of these disciplines.
Kevin Steiner discussed how the needs of the library and publishing communities have driven the direction that AIP Publishing has taken in open science, starting with the archives in 1999, which primarily served communities in the sciences. Authors and researchers tend to value the ability to share and get access to content while not necessarily dealing with paywalls. The challenges that come with read-and-publish agreements mean that journals are not getting the support needed to become open access. Two of the major factors are the level of resources to manage the internal workflow and the perception of equality.
Why Subscribe to Open?
Richard Gallagher and Ben Ashcroft both said that among the current approaches to open access, S2O is the most equitable model with the highest impact and the following benefits:
- There is no cost for authors to publish
- There is no cost for readers to access the content
- The concept is simple to understand with a high degree of budgeting certainty for libraries
“S2O uses the same workflow that has been established in the industry for decades.”
Kevin Steiner shared that AIP Publishing is now testing the viability of S2O with a three-year pilot programme for the Journal of Applied Physics and Physics of Plasmas in response to those challenges. It is assessing the success based on three factors: usage, sustainability and the impact of publications.
Impact and results
Richard Gallagher stated that Annual Reviews has successfully moved all its 51 journals to open access using the S2O model. He reports an increased usage of up to fourfold for some countries, and in low-medium income countries, the growth can be up to 30 times. Usage is also no longer confined to academic libraries but to non-academic public institutions such as NGOs, community hospitals and public health authorities – sectors of society that really need it.
Over at De Gruyter, Ben Ashcroft shared that over the next four years, the journals in the broad and diversified portfolio will continue to shift between models. With that in mind, the De Gruyter all-inclusive model has been created so that libraries will be able to cover everything with a single annual fee, making open access publishing for their patrons simple and affordable. The all-inclusive approach has since been adopted by consortia, such as Jisc in the UK, IPSAM in Sweden, SURF in the Netherlands and a range of prestigious North American institutions.
Kevin Steiner revealed that while AIP Publishing is only in the first year of its pilot programme, it has seen positive usage statistics and subscription numbers for the two journals. The jury is still out on whether it will lead to a higher number of submissions.
About the publishers
Annual Reviews
Founded in 1931, Annual Reviews is a non-profit open access publisher dedicated to synthesising and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society. The publication programme now includes 51 review journals commissioned by experts. By 2023, all of its journals had been moved to open access via S2O.
