The Microbiology Society has announced that it met its sustainability target for the Journal of General Virology and the Journal of Medical Microbiology under the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model for 2025. All content published in these titles in the next year will be published as permanently Open Access (OA).
S2O is an impactful, simple and compliant model. It is internationally recognised and provides a sustainable approach to transitioning subscription-based journals to OA, one year at a time. It is based on existing subscription processes, where subscriptions enable the journal’s transition to OA, meaning that articles published are freely available for all to access.
The Microbiology Society is a membership charity and not-for-profit publisher. Under the S2O model, subscribers to Journal of Medical Microbiology and the Journal of General Virology are offered continued access to their subscribed titles through the standard renewal process, which takes into account a library’s current budgetary commitments. Provided that enough subscriptions are renewed, the journal is moved to OA for that year. This means that the content of that year becomes openly accessible under Creative Commons CC-BY licence, available for everyone to read.
S2O is designed to support the sustainable transition to OA through the regular renewals process with full transparency and no additional costs for subscribers.
Benefits of S2O
• S2O titles open newly published content to be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world, whilst ensuring that the journal can continue to serve its community for years to come.
• Subscribing institutions retain guaranteed access to S2O journal archives (subscriber access only).
• Subscribing institutions secure uncapped OA publishing for their researchers.
• S2O supports our wider portfolio transition to OA, providing broader access to our content and increased usage for authors.
• Via S2O, subscribing institutions actively support the transition of our journals to OA without any additional cost or administration, using the existing renewals process.
Researchers at subscribing institutions have full access to the subscribed journal archive as well as unlimited OA publishing in that title.
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