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In 2021 Royal Society Publishing committed to the ambitious goal of becoming 100% open access by 2026. Subscribe to Open (S2O) has made this possible by enabling our hybrid subscription journals to become fully open access in the next stage of our journey towards full, sustainable open access.

For 2026, our eight subscription journals met the threshold to become fully open access under S2O.

This page helps librarians to understand S2O. If you are a researcher, then you'll find more relevant information at Subscribe to Open for authors.

What is S2O?

is a cost-effective, high-impact and equitable way for publishers to transition to full open access.

S2O allows publishers to convert journals from subscriptions to open access, one year at a time. Each year we will offer subscribers to our 8 subscription journals continued access to the journals via S2O. If sufficient current subscribers participate in the S2O offer (simply by not opting out) we will open the content covered by that year’s subscription for everyone and allow all researchers to publish open access without requiring payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC).

The S2O model is expanding, with new publishers and libraries participating each year. There are now 347 journals from 55 publishers operating on an S2O basis. Participants include learned society, university press and privately owned publishers in Europe and North America, along with major commercial publishers.

What are the benefits of S2O?

• Allows the Royal Society journals to remain fully open access
• Provides equitable open access for authors and readers, with no APCs charged
• Enables compliance with funder requirements, including cOAlition S and the NIH that mandate open access publication
• Enables compliance with many national and institutional OA policies
• Allows existing subscription spending to be converted directly into open access funding
• Provides greater reach and impact of research through increased article downloads and citations
• Supports researchers in low- and middle-income countries and in less well-resourced institutions in more affluent countries
• Flat pricing in Y2 and Y3 if customers sign up for a three year agreement
• Predictable pricing through the (new) Transparent Pricing Model

Is S2O sustainable?

We want to keep the Royal Society journals open access and S2O can make this possible, but it will depend on you, our library customers. Read & Publish agreements will continue, and during our renewal period, library subscription customers will be asked to continue supporting the journals as open access publications via S2O. If sufficient libraries agree to do so, open access will remain. If there is not enough support, the journals will return to the traditional subscription model for that year. The offer will be repeated every year, with the opening of each year’s content contingent on sufficient participation.

How does S2O work alongside Read & Publish?

In 2021 we introduced Read & Publish agreements which helped bring our open access output up from 45% in 2020 to over 70% by the end of 2025. Read & Publish has proved to be an effective and sustainable open access model and will continue to be the most inclusive offering for our librarian customers. Our fully open access journals Open Biology and Royal Society Open Science remain gold open access are covered under Read & Publish but not S2O.

How can I support the Royal Society's journey towards full, sustainable open access?

Subscribe to our journals, either to single titles or via packages, sign up to Read & Publish or purchase the Journals Archive. Your support will help to ensure full, sustainable open access. Contact us for more information.