Jisc announces its support for the global initiative ‘Subscribe to Open’ developed by non-profit publisher Annual Reviews.

The Subscribe to Open initiative aims to convert selected subscription journals to open access using existing current global subscription revenue.

Caren Milloy, director of licensing at Jisc says:

“In supporting the transition to open access it is important to pilot a diversity of models. This global initiative aligns with the spirit of Plan S and offers a long-term open access business model that can help our members in the transition toward OA in a cost-effective and sustainable manner."

Subscribe to Open empowers libraries to use their collection budgets to make selected world-leading review journals open to everyone. The pilot program, including five Annual Reviews titles, aims to launch this year. The journals will publish content using a CC BY licence and current UK higher education Annual Review subscribers that take the agreement via Jisc Collections have confirmed their support for the model. More journals may move to Subscribe to Open if the pilot successfully converts these titles to open access in 2020.

“Annual Reviews appreciates the support from the Jisc consortium for Subscribe to Open which provides an immediate and practical path to opening a vast body of research output that would otherwise remain gated.”

Richard Gallagher, president and editor-in-chief, Annual Reviews.

The pilot aims to convert five of the fifty-one Annual Reviews Journals to open access if the subscription revenue threshold is met. The first journal to benefit from the programme is the 2020 volume of the Annual Review of Cancer Biology which has been successfully converted from gated to open access.

The status of the four other journals, the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science, the Annual Review of Political Science, and Annual Review of Public Health, will be announced in due course.