Subscribe To Open
Subscribe to Open is the new business model of EMS Press for fair and sustainable Open Access publishing.
2022 Programme Results
We are pleased to announce that we have successfully converted all 17 of our S2O journals programme to open access for the whole of 2022. Further details can be found here. Our 2023 round is now available and consists of 21 journals - pricing and package details can be found on our info pages.
Overview
EMS Press has made the decision to transition its portfolio of journal titles to Open Access. In making this decision, it was agreed that the society could not support a model that may present barriers to publication, and as such any model relying on APCs would not be suitable. Through rigorous analysis of the various remaining options available to the Press, we have elected to pursue a Subscribe to Open (S2O) business model.
Transformative agreements, including Subscribe to Open pioneered by Annual Reviews, emerged as the most promising. — SPA-OPS Report, 2019
S2O is a sustainable and equitable model for open access. Libraries continue to subscribe to journals for the coming year, as they always have (with the usual subscriber benefits, such as archive and online-first access). At the beginning of the new subscription year if a journal has achieved the target set by the Press then that journal becomes open access for all issues published in that subscription year - if not then it remains behind a paywall and only subscribers have access. Where there is a funder requirement for open access EMS Press will publish articles under Green Open Access, ensuring that the article is freely available regardless of the overall journal status.
The only way to guarantee access to any of the Press’s journals is to subscribe, and doing so has the added effect if flipping titles to open access once a threshold is achieved, benefitting the whole mathematics research community.
Open access content provided through our Subscribe To Open (S2O) programme is done so under the CC-BY 4.0 license. Please view our Terms of Digital Access for our repository policy.
S2O has clear benefits for all participants in the publishing ecosystem.
For the subject librarian
Retain control of budgets and collection;
Administratively, subscriptions operate as before but now support OA;
Guaranteed access to journal content when subscribing (including online-first and full archive), regardless of outcome.
For the researcher
No APCs or other financial barriers to publication;
Publish where you choose, not where your institution has a deal;
Support an equitable system for all researchers based on relevance and quality, not cost.
For the publisher
Streamlined administrative processes, reducing internal costs allowing focus to be on content;
Support OA in a truly sustainable way;
Support global equity in scholarly publishing.
Journals included in EMS Press's 2023 S2O Programme are:
Publications of the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (PRIMS)
Rendiconti del Seminario Matematico della Università di Padova (RSMUP)
--
Additional Resources
EMS Press S2O Survey Report (June 2020)
EMS Press S2O survey raw data (June 2020)
Annual Reviews S2O resource centre
Subscribe to Open: A practical approach for converting subscription journals to open access (Learned Publishing, 2019)
cOAlition S endorses S2O (April 2021)
SPA-OPS Independent Report into Open Access Business Models (2019)
Open Access Wikipedia page