JSTOR, part of the nonprofit organization ITHAKA, has announced that the first 100 books published through the Path to Open initiative are now openly available to readers worldwide. The milestone marks the completion of the program’s initial three-year pathway, with titles originally released in 2023 transitioning from early access for participating libraries to full open access.
Path to Open was developed to address a longstanding challenge in scholarly publishing: expanding global access to peer-reviewed academic books while maintaining financial sustainability for university presses. The program operates through a cost-sharing model in which libraries support new monographs, publishers receive guaranteed funding from JSTOR, and books ultimately become freely available to all readers.
The newly open titles span disciplines across the humanities and social sciences and were published by university presses of varying sizes, reflecting the initiative’s emphasis on bibliodiversity and broad participation within the scholarly publishing ecosystem. All titles underwent standard peer review and editorial development prior to publication.
Open access availability is expected to significantly increase discovery and use of these works. While open access books currently represent approximately 10% of titles on JSTOR, they account for 45% of total book usage on the platform. JSTOR anticipates usage of the first 100 Path to Open titles will increase by more than 300% now that they are openly accessible and discoverable by institutions worldwide and beyond academia.
The program was developed in collaboration with university press leaders and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and continues to be guided by a Path to Open Community Advisory Committee comprising librarians, publishers, and scholars. The first cohort of open titles includes research addressing public health, education, religion, communications, literature, film studies, and global history, with many works focusing on underrepresented topics and regions.
More than 250 libraries and nearly 50 publishers currently participate in Path to Open, demonstrating the model’s viability as an ongoing approach to sustainable open access book publishing. Several of the newly opened books have already received scholarly recognition and are now available for course adoption, citation, and research use without access barriers.
Click here to read the original press release.
