A Different Open Access Model for Journals
Recent discussion of open-access journals and their financing prompted a reader to share information about a different model for publishers and journals converting to open-access, known as “subscribe-to-open”.
Subscribe-to-open hasn’t been discussed much, but it is currently being tried out by De Gruyter Brill, the humanities publisher readers may know for their ancient philosophy journals Phronesis and Apeiron.
Reader “C.B.” writes:
S2O, as they call it, flips the journal by just asking academic libraries to continue their subscription at something like the current price, and, provided a certain threshold for continued subscriptions is met, makes all articles for the coming year open-access (with no article processing charges, or APC). If libraries cancel their subscription en masse, the threshold isn’t met, and so the journal’s coming year of publications instead remain behind the paywall. Previously published articles, as with most OA flips, remain behind the paywall, to provide institutional libraries with some individual incentive for continued subscription.
The major appeal to this model is that it funds OA publication through existing library budgets, rather than disadvantaging those at institutions without new budget line items for APC fees (a worry that was raised in regard to the Journal of the American Philosophical Association), while not requiring the community, or struggling philosophy departments, to pick up the budgetary slack (as has been floated re: Ergo). More specifically relevant to DN readers is that in the coming year the philosophy journals Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie and Analyse und Kritik will be flipped under this model.
Here is a link to De Gruyter Brill’s press release promoting the program. I have no horse in the race nor any involvement with De Gruyter Brill (aside from publishing in their journals occasionally), but I thought it might be of some relevance to the discussion.
You can read more about subscribe-to-open program here, and here’s a video about it (promotional, but explanatory):
This is not open access.
I don’t think that’s really fair–it isn’t classic diamond OA, but neither is e.g. the JAPA flip, which everyone glossed as OA anyway. The journals are flipped to diamond open-access, without APCs or charges for readers (or non-subscribing institutions), the years that a particular funding level is met. It’s not really any different than a journal saying ‘thanks to funding from XYZ institution, we’re able to guarantee diamond OA from 2024-2026’, which usually doesn’t guarantee they’re able to make the back catalogue OA either.
The articles (for the qualifying years) will be released under a Creative Commons license. Which makes at least those articles open access.
At the level of the journals: However one weighs it against other arrangements, I think it’s better than unconditionally closed access.
This is like saying that Springer (or whichever publisher’s) journals that make articles OA for an author fee are OA. Having some articles available under a Creative Commons license is better than unconditionally closed access, but it is not OA. It muddies the waters to call this, as the post title does, an open access model.
What benefit does this offer to the publisher’s owners and/or shareholders?
My hunch: many EU countries, where De Gruyter Brill have proportionally more business, have mandated that all research be published in OA journals. Big publishers make this work by negotiating agreements with national funding bodies, where they agree to take all work for the year from researchers in the given country in exchange for a block grant.
Small-ish publishers like De Gruyter Brill don’t have the same leverage, because researchers in most fields (save the niche subareas where they’re significant, like ancient philosophy) could simply forego publication in DGB journals entirely. And without these national agreements most academics wouldn’t have the research funds to cover APCs, so agreeing to go OA for the benefit of the regulation in exchange for not losing the sales you’ve already got is the lowest-risk solution.
It goes only a small way to open access, discussed in the comments of our article here. https://doi.org/10.21428/6ffd8432.5e24d46d