EDP Sciences – EDP Sciences decides against Open Access transition under S2O for Radioprotection in 2023

“EDP Sciences and the Société Française de Radioprotection (SFRP) announced today that they have decided against transitioning Radioprotection to open access under Subscribe to Open (S2O) in 2023. Despite concerted efforts to promote the initiative and reach the required subscription threshold, the financial viability of the transition was not achieved at this time. This decision underscores the reality that open access for S2O journals is not guaranteed unless subscriptions are renewed….”

Astronomy & Astrophysics to remain in Open Access under Subscribe to Open model in 2023

“Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is pleased to announce that it will continue to publish its research in open access for the second consecutive year under the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model. In contrast to other core astronomy journals that have transitioned or will transition to open access via the Gold (APC) route, A&A has chosen a different approach to achieve immediate open access while minimizing any potential disruption to authors or subscribers. This decision reaffirms A&A’s commitment to making its high-quality research easily accessible to the global scientific community, while also ensuring sustainability and financial stability for the journal.

A&A’s Board of Directors and EDP Sciences have confirmed that despite the challenges in maintaining subscriptions under the S2O model, they have decided to continue publishing in open access for another year. This ensures that A&A’s high-quality scientific content remains freely accessible to all readers with no article processing charges (APCs) imposed on authors. Authors retain copyright ownership and comply with institutional and funders open access requirements. The engagement of A&A with the S2O model is a testament to the journal’s commitment to open access and to providing a cost-effective publishing option for many authors, despite the challenges faced by the scholarly publishing industry….”

Berghahn Open Anthro enters its fourth successful year of publishing open access using S2O

“Berghahn Journals is delighted to announce that all 2023 volumes in our Berghahn Open Anthro – Subscribe-to-Open (BOA-S2O) collection will be open access.

The success of the first phase of the initiative (2020-2022) has enabled the dissemination of respected anthropological research and contributed to the ongoing success and growth of these journals while supporting equitable open access. The BOA-S2O collection, which now includes 15 journals, is in its fourth year thanks to the wide-ranging support of the library community….”

Conversion to Open Access using equitable new model sees upsurge in usage

“Leading nonprofit science publisher Annual Reviews has successfully converted the first fifteen journal volumes of the year to open access (OA) resulting in substantial increases in downloads of articles in the first month.

Through the innovative OA model called Subscribe to Open (S2O), developed by Annual Reviews, 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. In addition, all articles from the previous nine volumes are also accessible to all. If support is insufficient, the paywall is retained….”

Subscribe to Open – Karger Publishers

“In 2023, we will be piloting the Subscribe to Open (S2O) business model with two journals, Pediatric Neurosurgery and Developmental Neuroscience, as part of our ongoing drive to support the transition to Open Access (OA). S2O is a alternative way to move journals to OA, alleviating some of the challenges that come with Gold OA. Where Gold OA relies on payment for publishing in the form of Article Processing Charges (APCs) by the authors or their institutions, S2O makes use of the existing subscription base, funds and infrastructure to make journals free to read and share as well as to publish in. Unlike Gold OA journals, which are continually OA, the OA status of S2O journals is decided volume by volume, early every year (depending on the level of subscriptions). S2O was originally developed by the publisher Annual Reviews and has been adopted by a growing number of publishers who are collaborating in the S2O Community of Practice….”

OASPA Equity in Open Access Workshop 1 Report | Zenodo

“This first OASPA workshop in the Equity in Open Access series took place on 7 March 2023, with publishers, librarians, funders, and other stakeholders. Participants came from a wide range of countries: Bangladesh, China, Finland, Germany, India, Japan, Malawi, Morocco, Norway, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania, the UK, the USA, and Zambia.

Participants discussed why equity is important, current challenges to global equity, examples of good practice, and priorities for increasing equity in OA.”

Report from Equity in Open Access workshop 1: the APC debate, reflections and rainbows – OASPA

“One consensus view that emerged from the conversations was that APCs (Article Processing / Publishing Charges) are a barrier to participation in OA publishing for authors in every region. This was in line with the global views OASPA has been gathering that were shared earlier this year. 

OASPA notes a raft of evidence and views supporting the problematic nature of the APC, from this 2020 commentary to this 2022 review and this 2022 study stating that open access is leading to closed research. 

OASPA also notes this 2019 blog post that asserts “unfairness lies at the core of the APC problem”, and talks about particular disadvantages to scholars based in the Global South. This 2020 study examining content published by US-based researchers between 2014 and 2018 in over 25,000 academic journals reveals that, in general, the likelihood for a scholar to author an APC-OA article “increases with male gender, employment at a prestigious institution, association with a STEM discipline, greater federal research funding, and more advanced career stage (i.e., higher professorial rank).” Meanwhile, we know that authors from the Global South are underrepresented in journals charging APCs from this study in December 2021. 

The APC model, and publisher deals that rely on APC-based computation, are therefore in danger of reinforcing a pattern of exclusive participation in open access. OA done this way leaves out the vast majority of the world’s researchers….

In other words, if APCs are inequitable, then so are fully-OA agreements (pure-publish) and transformative agreements (Read & Publish) when these are struck without principles of global inclusion and equity at their core….”

An open letter from UK researchers to UK library directors regarding the UK’s reliance on read-and-publish deals with journal publishers

“On 3rd March 2023, all thirteen “Ivy plus” library directors in the USA published an open letter in support of new ways of publishing journal articles, moving away from article processing charges (APCs)  and read-and-publish models.  These models are increasingly seen as outdated as they reinforce inequities in scholarly publishing.  In particular these models typically move the paywall from the reader to the author which excludes many authors in the global South.  

 
The UK is already unusual in its over-reliance on read-and-publish agreements to achieve open access.  We have a chance now to align with key partners internationally.  If we agree with the principles outlined by the Ivy Plus library directors then a natural next step is to stop negotiating with Springer Nature, and other legacy publishers.  This would allow us to spend time and money on collaborating internationally on more valuable activities like building and maintaining ethical approaches to scholarly publishing.  These new approaches include developing our own infrastructure, diamond open access journals and other promising models such as Subscribe to Open.  These approaches should ensure that our work is freely available for all to read and that authors do not need to pay to publish their work….”

EDP Sciences – Library community backs Subscribe to Open Mathematics journals – open access continues in 2023

“EDP Sciences and the Société de Mathématiques Appliquées et Industrielles (SMAI) are delighted to announce that their Subscribe to Open (S2O) model for open access publication of six mathematics journals* has been successfully supported by the library community for another year, allowing the journals to continue to be published in open access in 2023….”

CRKN and UTP Make Climate Change Journal Accessible to Readers Around the Globe | Canadian Research Knowledge Network

“The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and University of Toronto Press (UTP) are very pleased to announce an innovative partnership for access to the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy through the Subscribe to Open model. The Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy publishes timely, evidence-based research that contributes to the urban climate agenda and supports governmental policy towards an equitable and resilient world. Through this partnership, CRKN members will gain access to critical climate research and support the open access dissemination of this research without any cost to authors.

Subscribe to Open is an equitable access model that offers a wide range of benefits to researchers, libraries, and the community at large. Institutional subscribers access the content through subscription, as with a regular subscription model. What is unique to the model is that once an annual subscription threshold is met, the volume year becomes open access and available to researchers, policymakers, and urban practitioners globally. University of Toronto Press launched the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy in October 2022 based upon this model….”

Knowledge Unlatched Shares Results of 2022 Pledging – Knowledge Unlatched

“Knowledge Unlatched (KU), a Wiley brand, is pleased to share the results of its 2022 pledging round, which ended in December 2022 and once again saw hundreds of libraries worldwide pledge support for OA book and journal collections offered by KU and its partners.

Overall, about 283 books will be made available OA in 2023. These include 184 books from the KU Select 2023 HSS Books Collection, two Focus Collections—Climate Change and Global Health—and around 99 books from KU’s partner collections. In addition, KU will support the publication of 700 peer-reviewed blog posts and 10 videos. KU’s efforts also contributed to the sustainability of 52 journals thanks to the successful continuation of 4 Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) partnerships and an additional 4 journals from the final year of the KU Select Journals collection. Additionally, over 200 additional books were made OA last year through KU Open Services—a service that helps publishers make titles OA on a title-by-title basis. KU expects similar numbers in 2023, bringing the combined number of books expected to be published OA via KU in 2023 to nearly 500….”

UKRI funding compliant models for small and society publishers

Under the new UKRI open access policy, all peer-reviewed research and review articles that acknowledge funding from UKRI or any of its councils submitted after 1 April 2022 need to be published open access (OA) immediately, without embargo, under a CC-BY licence, either by the publisher making the final Version of Record (VoR)1 OA, or by allowing authors to self-archive the Version of Record (VoR) or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM)2 in a repository. Although publishing an article OA in a hybrid journal is compliant with UKRI’s OA policy, UKRI will not cover the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) for hybrid journals, unless the journal is included in a Transitional Agreement with the author’s affiliated institution, or if it meets the sector’s criteria for transformative journals. UK institutions, working through Jisc support several strategies to transition subscription, paywalled content to OA. We aim to provide equitable and tailored paths to transition for smaller, not for profit publishers so that all authors have ubiquitous access to compliant routes to publish and provide a rapid transition to OA. At the same time funds are limited and must support the broadest choice for authors and return the best value from public money. This document sets out a series of options through which small and learned society publishers can offer models that are compliant with UKRI’s funding policy. The models are summarised in the table below and it is likely that more models will emerge throughout the transition. 

Open access for book chapters: event summary – Research

“Long form scholarly works, such as monographs, book chapters and edited collections, will become in scope of the new UKRI open access policy if published after 1 January 2024. UKRI is developing a dedicated fund to support these new requirements.

A variety of publishing models already exist to help cover the cost of publishing open access. However, many publishers have already introduced the Chapter Processing Charge (CPC) as their preferred publishing model, and similarly to the Book Processing Charge (BPC) model, there are concerns that the CPC model will not scale with this limited fund….

The inclusion of book chapters in the UKRI open access policy raises a number of issues that must be resolved prior to policy launch:

Where book chapters contain a UKRI funder acknowledgement, but the edited works that they are contained within do not, the individual book chapters must be made open access (OA) within 12 months of publication. This applies to each chapter, if more than one chapter acknowledges funding
If the whole edited work acknowledges funding, then the policy applies to the whole book, even if book chapters acknowledge different UKRI funding
Chapters in edited works from born OA publishers and those made OA via a subscribe to open or community driven (diamond) models would be compliant…”

Some Observations from Charleston (Open Access Edition): – The Scholarly Kitchen

“This year’s Charleston Hub (again) included a significant focus on open access (OA) from the perspectives of both the publisher and library communities. The advent of the OSTP’s Nelson Memo is driving hope, change, and concern. With these impressions still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share some of my key takeaways….

Given…the broader concern that zero-embargo posting of accepted manuscripts is simply not sustainable, many publishers are accelerating OA plans, preparing to enter into OA Agreements when they have not previously done so and moving beyond APC-only models….

Academic libraries are genuinely worried that they will be expected to pay for increased OA fees and to manage OSTP required mandates without additional resources. The OA Agreements they have entered into with publishers were generally designed and modeled around corresponding authors from a given institution, not all authors. The existing agreements were not designed to carry this additional load. New modeling is needed, as is broader adoption of persistent identifiers (PIDs) and enhanced author workflows….”