Did you know the idea of scholarly institutions freely distributing research publications to readers is as old as academic publishing itself?
As discussed by modern historian Dr. Aileen Fyfe in this past Scholastica blog interview, since the inception of scholarly journals in the 17th century up until the 20th century, learned societies and universities published and circulated research among each others’ constituents at no cost, funded through a combination of endowments, membership fees, and, in some cases, government support.
So, in a way, the scholarly organizations starting OA journals and flipping titles to OA today are advancing a longstanding practice through the powers of the internet—notably and of critical importance in a more diverse research landscape than in the past. Though, there is still a long way to go.
Of course, publishing is vastly different than hundreds of years ago, with higher volumes of scholarship to vet and disseminate than ever. And delivering high-quality content to global communities in line with expanding research standards and in the face of new research integrity challenges isn’t free. Even not-for-profits must ensure they have sustainable income sources to survive and thrive.
A while back, the Scholastica blog did a high-level analysis of OA publishing approaches not-for-profit society publishers have started implementing in recent years, including subsidized Diamond OA journals (free to read and free to publish), APC-funded Gold OA journals, Transformative Agreements (TAs), and cooperative infrastructure and funding models. As the OA landscape continues shaping up, I wanted to explore some of the latest examples of OA publishing models scholarly societies are adopting, how they’re working to advance research equity within those frameworks, and industry learnings.
More Subscribe to Open pilots
To start, the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model, wherein a publisher converts its journals to OA for each year they receive enough library subscriptions to cover the cost, continues gaining ground. In Scholastica’s 2022 high-level analysis of society OA publishing models, we noted the European Mathematical Society (EMS Press) and the International Water Association (IWA Publishing) had adopted S2O. Both of those S2O programs are still going strong, with various other publishers testing out the model as well.
New examples of society publishers piloting S2O include:
- The American Society for Microbiology (ASM): ASM announced a shift to S2O for the 2025 subscription year for its 6 subscription journal titles.
- AIP Publishing: The Journal of Applied Physics and Physics of Plasmas, two of AIP Publishing’s flagship titles, became OA as part of an S2O pilot program in March 2024.
- Liverpool University Press (LUP): LUP reached its target to shift its planning and development journals, Town Planning Review and International Development Planning Review to OA for the 2024 subscription year as part of a new S2O transformative open access agreement called LUP Open Planning. LUP Open Planning offers exclusive benefits to participating institutions, including access to all archival content from the journals, access to the new year’s content as soon as it becomes available (even if the S2O target hasn’t been reached), and no publishing charges for their authors.
New Zero-Embargo Green Open Access model
In OA publishing model development news, ACS Publications has seen uptake for a new Zero-Embargo Green Open Access (ZEGO) funding approach they launched in September 2023. Authors of accepted ACS papers who choose the new ZEGO OA route pay a fee that “covers the costs of taking the manuscript from initial submission through to the final editorial decision” in order to deposit the version of record into a repository under an open copyright license. In a report on the progress of ACS’ OA publishing program to date, they noted that “these costs, such as community development, author support, data verification, fraud detection, and managing the vital peer review process, would otherwise be covered by an institutional subscription, a gold OA article publishing charge, or a read and publish agreement.”
ACS also continues to fully sponsor the Diamond OA journal ACS Central Science and has a mix of transformative agreement and Gold OA publishing routes across its titles. Recognizing that “fees associated with the publishing process can be a barrier to under- or un-funded researchers, particularly those in emerging economies,” ACS also offers special country discounts for authors in World Bank Group A and B countries for their Gold and ZEGO OA routes. In its report, ACS said, “we’re proud to say that most authors who wish to publish OA in an ACS journal are able to do so at no cost to them.”
Advances in Gold OA APC waiver funds
Building off the example of ACS’ OA publishing fee waivers above, we see other scholarly societies introducing Gold OA journals with associated fee waiver programs. A notable recent example is the launch of ASCE OPEN: Multidisciplinary Journal of Civil Engineering by the American Society of Civil Engineers along with the ASCE Open Research and Global Equity Fund in 2023.
The ASCE Open Research and Global Equity Fund offers APC waivers for researchers in emerging economies (World Bank classifications) who wish to publish in ASCE OPEN, which is the society’s first fully OA journal.
Amid ongoing concerns expressed by scholarly publishing stakeholders and the mainstream media about the potential for APCs to price out researchers from low- and middle-income countries, such as this recent Science article by Jeffrey Brainard, scholarly societies forming comprehensive fee waiver funding programs with clear request routes like ASCE are promoting more equitable and transparent APC models.
Transformative Agreements gain ground
As discussed above, the transformative agreement OA funding route also continues to pick up steam among scholarly societies. A notable recent example is the progression of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s initiative, launched in 2021, to make all fully RSC-owned journals OA by developing transitional “Read & Publish” agreements with institutional libraries and consortia worldwide.
A 2023 Society Publishers’ Coalition report found:
“During the first full year of these transitional agreements, the society reached a significant landmark, with more than half of all its published articles open access (53 percent). These articles were free to access and held liberal re-use rights under the Creative Commons CC-BY license.”
RSC is on track to transition all fully RSC-owned journals to OA by 2028 and most recently announced a four-year agreement with TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library to provide unlimited publishing services to authors and readers at 77 institutions in Germany. Authors at participating institutions will be able to read and publish in all RSC journals for free.
In June of 2023, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) also reiterated its plan to make all ACM publications fully OA by 2026 via ACM OPEN, the society’s novel take on the Transformative Agreement. AMC OPEN is the first TA model to offer unlimited read and publish access to participating institutions at a fixed annual cost via a tier-based system rather than APCs. AMC uses average article publication ranges to determine which tiers to place institutions in. ACM said they launched the model because they realize APC-based TAs can be “extremely unpredictable and risky for the university in terms of establishing budgets to underwrite the cost of these Agreements.”
As discussed by Rob Johnson and Elanor Malcolmson of Research Consulting in their 2024 report “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone: The changing landscape of UK learned society publishing,” “negotiating such agreements poses a particular challenge for smaller society publishers with limited resources and market reach.” So bargaining power remains a critical challenge for smaller society publishers seeking to pursue the TA route.
Expanding society and university press partnerships
Finally, there has also been a seeming increase in society and university press publishing partnership initiatives. Examples include the formation of the Purpose-Led Publishing Coalition by AIP Publishing, the American Physical Society, and IOP Publishing. Various new coalitions and cooperative infrastructure and funding models for OA have also been gaining ground, including:
- The Scholarly Publishing Collective: A collaboration between nonprofit scholarly journal publishers and societies launched in 2022. The Scholarly Publishing Collective, which is managed by Duke University Press, offers members access to publishing resources that would otherwise be cost prohibitive.
- The MIT Press shift+OPEN initiative: Now in its second year, shift+OPEN provides funding and support to flip established subscription journals to Diamond OA publishing models.
- New publisher partnership agreements: In recent years, some self-publishing societies have also announced partnership agreements with other not-for-profit publishers including university presses and fellow societies, as discussed by Johnson and Malcolmson in their 2024 report on the state of society publishing in the UK.
Diamond OA update
In Scholastica’s 2022 high-level analysis of society OA publishing models, we also covered progress in Diamond OA publishing based on the initial findings from the Plan S “OA Diamond Journals Study.” That report found that the Diamond OA model appeared to have the most promise for smaller publishing organizations, stating “most OA diamond journals are the sole journal of their publisher or are with a publisher having just a few journals.”
As discussed above, there are examples of larger society publishers maintaining Diamond OA journals like ACS, as well as new initiatives to support Diamond OA journal flips like shift+OPEN. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the primary challenge to Diamond OA publishing remains securing reliable journal funds. “The road to sustainability: Examining key drivers in open access diamond journal publishing,” a new article in Learned Publishing, offers a thoughtful breakdown of factors in the success of Diamond OA journals globally, including “the region and language of the journal’s publishing country and the discipline, ownership, financial status, and openness of the journal.” The paper calls for national and international efforts to enhance the sustainability of Diamond OA journals.
Looking to the future: opportunities and challenges
Society publishers now have greater impetus to pilot and codify OA publishing models than ever, with Plan S in effect and the approaching January 2026 deadline for federal funding agencies to implement the 2022 OSTP public access directives among other recent mandates. This July, Plan S also announced a new “Pricing framework to foster global equity in scholarly publishing,” intended to offer an objective way to set differentiated global OA pricing.
Amid new funder initiatives, publishers are still working to project what the long-term effects of OA policies will be so they can make more informed decisions when choosing OA models. In a new PNAS article, Amy Brand, Phillip A. Sharp, William B. Bonvillian, and Michael Stebbins discussed the implications of the OSTP deadline in the turbulent current scholarly publishing landscape and argued: “Developing and funding a research agenda to elucidate how changes in policy and practice will affect the communication of research results is imperative.” The paper recommended three major topics for investigation, posing questions regarding how OA policies will influence industry structures, peer review pressures, and researchers and universities.
The promise of OA publishing is its potential to not only expand access to research but also encourage more diverse, global participation in scholarship. However, developing equitable OA publishing approaches is essential to realizing this vision. As illuminated by the examples above, society publishers are playing a pivotal role in helping to level the publishing playing field and maintain healthy market competition in the mixed ecosystem of corporate and not-for-profit players.
For further reading, the 2023 “Society Publishers’ Coalition: a shared commitment to open scholarship” report offered a granular analysis of the rate at which society publishers have been expanding their OA offerings in recent years. Contributors to that report discussed the various benefits of OA publishing for societies and their communities, including broader dissemination of research literature and engagement with it, leading to increased impact. As Alison Danforth from the British Sociological Association noted, “the widespread availability of research is hugely important to all disciplines looking to tackle the major challenges posed by society.”
Time will tell which OA approaches will gain the most ground. However, at this point, it appears the future of OA publishing will continue to include a multiplicity of models based on varying disciplinary needs and resources.
