We’re switching our eight subscription journals to a Subscribe to Open model. Royal Society Publishing Director, Rod Cookson, explains why and how.
In August, the Royal Society announced plans to make our eight subscription journals open access (OA) on a Subscribe to Open (S2O) model in 2026. In doing so, we will deliver equitable OA for thousands of authors and readers each year, with no APCs charged, and make the world’s oldest continuously published scholarly journal—Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society—free to read for everyone.
Why are we moving to S2O?
Our journey to S20 has been a long one, rooted in two of our core objectives: having an ‘international and global focus’ and being a ‘visible leader on open science, academic freedom and integrity in science’. We published our first OA article in 2006 and launched our first OA journal, Open Biology, in 2011. The following year we introduced our transparent pricing mechanism (TPM), which committed us to reduce subscription prices as the percentage of our articles that were OA rose. Royal Society Open Science, covering all STEM subjects, was launched in 2014. In 2020, the Society pledged to convert all of its journals to OA. The signing of our first Read & Publish agreements followed in 2021. These agreements accelerated our transition, with our subscription journals moving from 17 percent OA in 2020 to 71 percent in 2024. We viewed this as excellent progress.
Two events in 2024 made us rethink our approach. First, our OA content increased so rapidly that the TPM triggered a 10 percent reduction in our subscription rates. Second, cOAlition S ceased paying APCs to hybrid subscription journals through its Transformative Journals scheme. These two big financial hits were all the more uncomfortable as the TPM had been designed with the expectation that APCs would offset price reductions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the proportion of OA articles in our subscription journals fell to 55 percent in the first half of 2025. We needed a course correction.
After reviewing possible alternatives, we selected S2O, attracted by four aspects of the model: its simplicity; that it would allow us to move to 100 percent OA in one stroke; its inherent equity; and the way it would expand our reach. Additionally, we were encouraged by the good experience publishers such as Annual Reviews and Berghahn Books have had with S2O and the positive feedback on the model we heard from many librarians. After detailed modelling and discussion within the Society, we agreed to proceed with S2O for 2026.
The S2O transition will involve further financial pain for the Royal Society, foregoing APCs on the subscription journals from funders outside cOAlition S, inter alia, but it will provide equitable access to our journals and enable the Society to fully deliver on its mission to promote science globally.
How will S2O Work in Practice?
We have invited our existing subscribers to continue to support our subscription journals as we move to S2O in 2026. We are also talking to our Read & Publish and consortia customers. If we have reached our revenue target by the end of January 2026, the journals will convert to OA. If there is not enough support, they will carry on with a traditional subscription model for the year.
If we meet our revenue target, S2O will provide benefits for library supporters, including:
- Access to 20 years of archive files that customers would not otherwise have, some 28,000 articles in total
- Flat pricing in year two and year three if customers sign up for a three-year agreement
- Predictable and reasonable pricing through our revised pricing policy
- No APCs for their researchers on the eight subscription journals
Wider benefits of S2O will include:
- All articles published in 2026 will be permanently OA and have a CC-BY licence
- Authors and readers will pay no fees
- The Society’s journals will comply with all funder OA mandates
- There will be no additional cost for libraries or funders
- The transition will be operationally simple for librarians
- Readership of the journals outside core subscriber areas will grow, in particular in the Global South, and very likely citation rates will increase
- Access to high quality science will increase for researchers everywhere
This is a significant improvement on the value proposition of the existing subscription model.
In future years, the S2O renewal cycle will continue, with the eight journals staying OA provided that library support remains robust. We are keen to gather feedback on S2O as we move forward, so we can fine tune the model to best suit the needs of our library partners.
The End of the open access journey?
Clearly, this is not the end of the transition to OA. The scholarly publishing community has a huge amount of work still to do, in terms of both advancing equity and developing fair business models that can be as adaptable and long-lived as the traditional subscription has been. For this learned society’s journals, however, S2O is a great step toward a new, more open, and more equitable future.
Read the full interview with Rod in Katina magazine.
