Open access through Subscribe to Open: a society publisher’s implementation

Authors: Sara Bosshart, Rod Cookson, Philipp Hess

As pressures mount from global funding mandates and initiatives like Plan S, publishers are seeking sustainable solutions to transition their subscription portfolios to open access.

For self-publishing societies with niche portfolios and low publication volumes, traditional transition options such as article processing charge models or transformative agreements are limited or out of reach and often involve significant financial risk.

In this article, we focus on one society publisher’s implementation of Subscribe to Open (S2O): an emerging open access model that moves away from article-level charges, instead leveraging existing subscription revenues and infrastructure to achieve seamless and sustainable open access.

We outline the advantages of this model for society publishers, the parameters to consider when implementing the model, the initial community response to a successful implementation and some early data highlighting the effect of the S2O model on our journals.

URL : Open access through Subscribe to Open: a society publisher’s implementation

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.567

The impact of open access publishing agreements at the University of Vienna in light of the Plan S requirements: a review of current status, challenges and perspectives

Authors : Rita Pinhasi, Brigitte Kromp, Guido Blechl, Lothar Hölblin

The University of Vienna, in partnership with other organisations across Austria, has been at the forefront of the open access (OA) movement in Europe and has been actively broadening the OA publishing opportunities for its researchers for well over half a decade.

Although the launch of Plan S in September 2018 by a group of funding bodies that includes the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) brought its unique challenges, it has also provided the international research community with a much-needed impetus, jolting publishers into action and raising awareness among university administrators and faculty in general.

The announcement also prompted the Vienna University Library to perform a mapping exercise, with a view to assessing how well the current publishing agreements match the needs of the University’s researchers in light of the Plan S requirements.

This article presents the results of this analysis and shares some of the challenges encountered through the negotiation and implementation of OA publishing agreements and how these, together with the revised Plan S implementation guidelines, have been informing the University’s strategy.

URL : The impact of open access publishing agreements at the University of Vienna in light of the Plan S requirements: a review of current status, challenges and perspectives

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.523