Subscribe to Open

A business model for publisher’s journals that is becoming increasingly established is Subscribe to Open (S2O). The model is important especially in economics and the social sciences as a bridge to Open Access Transformation. Subscribe to Open is a pragmatic approach for converting subscription journals to free Open Access without costs for authors (article processing charges).

Subscribe to Open is based on existing library subscriptions. If a sufficient number of subscribers participate in the Subscribe to Open offer, the publisher grants Open Access to the contents. If participation is insufficient, the publisher can restrict access to subscribers only again.

The ZBW is committed to enabling the conversion to S2O:

A cooperation on Subscribe to Open has existed since 2024 with the Franz Steiner publishing house. The ZBW financially secures the S2O model for the quarterly journal for social and economic history (Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte - VSWG) and thus enables the sustainable conversion to open access.

Scientific journals of the DeGruyter Brill publishing house are offered via a consortium of the Göttingen State and University Library with open access components (S2O or Publish&Read). In order to establish a strong and lasting consortium, the ZBW is contributing to the financing of the convolute Wirtschaft with over 30 titles in a start-up phase. In addition, the ZBW will cover the publication costs for the Publish&Read journals in the bundle.

As a pilot project, the ZBW, together with the academic publisher Duncker & Humblodt, transformed two journals into open access in 2022:

In addition to providing new publications in Diamond Open Access, the ZBW also supported the release of older volumes of the two journals. This made several thousands of articles freely available and reusable under a CC-BY licence.

Other model projects are currently being negotiated.

Are you interested? You are welcome to contact us.