The Royal Society has approved plans to make its entire journal portfolio fully open access in 2026 by adopting the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model.
Under the agreement reached in July 2025, institutional subscribers will be invited to continue their subscriptions in 2026 in support of the S2O model. If sufficient renewal thresholds are met, the Society’s eight subscription journals—including Philosophical Transactions A and Philosophical Transactions B—will become freely available online for that year, with no fees required from authors for publication.
The S2O model operates on an annual basis, converting journals to open access contingent upon continued subscriber support. This approach enables both reading and publishing to be free of charge for all users, regardless of institutional affiliation. It replaces the current hybrid model under which authors may pay article processing charges (APCs) to make individual articles openly accessible.
The Society plans to repeat the offer annually while continuing to expand Read and Publish agreements with libraries, institutions, and consortia as part of a longer-term strategy for sustainable open access.
Earlier in 2025, the Society agreed a Read and Publish deal with Brazil’s Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES). This arrangement enables affiliated authors to publish in the Society’s journals, including Royal Society Open Science and Open Biology, without incurring APCs.
The Society stated that the proposed transition to S2O aims to broaden global access to its journals and strengthen its open access strategy in alignment with its long-standing role in scientific publishing since the launch of the first scientific journal in 1665.
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