Project MUSE, the prominent platform for humanities and social sciences, has set its sights on accelerating the shift towards Open Access by announcing the participation of numerous university press and scholarly publishers in its innovative Subscribe to Open (S2O) program for journals in 2025. The initiative is already witnessing a commitment from fifty journals across more than 20 publishers, with expectations of additional participants before the year concludes.
The S2O program represents a sustainable and equitable model that enables journals to embrace Open Access for their current content without the imposition of Article Processing Charges (APCs). By utilizing the trusted Journal Collections framework, Project MUSE's S2O program offers a seamless transition from traditional subscriptions to open access, ensuring revenue stability for non-profit publishers while facilitating uninterrupted access for libraries.
The core principle of the MUSE S2O Program lies in making the current year's content from participating journals available to the public, contingent upon ongoing support from MUSE subscribers. Libraries, through the renewal of their collection subscriptions, guarantee continued access to both historic content and current scholarship. Should the annual threshold for sustainability be met, the current year's content from journals in the S2O program becomes openly accessible. Failure to meet the threshold retains the content behind subscription barriers.
Participation in the S2O program is open to actively publishing, full-royalty journals in the MUSE Journal Collections, and publishers can opt to involve as many or as few of their titles as desired. The list of committed publishers and journal titles for S2O is regularly updated on the Project MUSE website.
Leaders from contributing publishers also voiced their support for the initiative. John Sherer, Spangler Family Director at The University of North Carolina Press, highlighted the significance of this program in advancing accessibility in scholarship, while Gan Qi, Director of The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, emphasized the opportunity it offers for greater inclusivity and global scholarly engagement.
With an extensive roster of over 700 current journals in the humanities and social sciences from nearly 200 non-profit publishers, Project MUSE is well-positioned to spearhead the development and implementation of the S2O business model at a considerable scale. The collaborative support from MUSE's global community of libraries has the potential to unlock a wealth of crucial scholarly material, particularly in disciplines often underserved by existing Open Access models.
Expectations are high for further announcements about additional participating publishers and journals leading up to the launch of the 2025 calendar year subscription term. To learn more about the Subscribe to Open initiative, visit Project MUSE's dedicated page.
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