Diamonds for authors #1: Subscribe to Open

Subscribe to Open logoThis post, the first in a series, introduces City Tech faculty to free-to-author, immediate open access publishing options.

Diamond iconNot all open access is funded the same way and the scholarly publishing community has proven highly creative in designing new models and related initiatives that grow diamond open access, open access without fees to authors. One of the larger programs is Subscribe to Open (S2O). Libraries pay part of their journal subscription funds to support ‘flipping’ a subscription journal to diamond open access. S2O, with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, was created by non-profit science publisher Annual Reviews. As of the end of 2023, 151 journals are using the S2O model.

S20 doesn’t convert all journals from a specific publisher to diamond open access but rather clusters of titles deemed important enough to merit the funding to convert. Publisher and library participants in S2O represent a wide variety of disciplines and geographical locations. You can peruse the list of the specific journals that have been flipped under S20.  Interested in finding other diamond open access journals? It’s easy to use the Directory of Open Access journal search tool and filter by ‘without fees.’

Mathematical Sciences Publishers recently announced that, via S2O, five of their most popular journals are now diamond open access: Geometry & Topology, Algebraic & Geometric Topology,  Algebra & Number Theory, Analysis and PDE, Pacific Journal of Mathematics.

How Subscribe to Open works

Diamond by Nadia Zilfah from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)