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International academic publisher EDP Sciences has announced that following the successful transition of Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena (MMNP) to open access under the Subscribe to Open (S2O) pilot earlier this year, a further five maths journals will transition to open access under this model from January 2021. The journals are: ESAIM: Control, Optimisation and Calculus of Variations (COCV); ESAIM: Mathematical Modelling and Numerical Analysis (M2AN); ESAIM: Probability and Statistics (PS); RAIRO – Theoretical Informatics and Applications; and RAIRO – Operations Research.

MMNP was the first mathematics journal in the world to adopt the S2O model. The transition of the other maths journals to open access under this model will have a significant impact on international mathematics publishing and places EDP Sciences and its partners among the champions of this model. The mathematics community is particularly supportive of open science and keen to embrace initiatives that further the transition to open access. Transitioning journals on this scale is bound to have a positive evolutionary effect within the community and support has already been expressed by a range of colleagues and stakeholders.

Under the S2O model, existing subscriber institutions are asked to subscribe as usual, and as long as EDP Sciences receives the expected subscription income, then the current year’s content is made available to all in full open access. In this way, institutions support journals for the common good of the academic community and demonstrate their commitment to the long-term sustainability of open access. For its part, EDP Sciences recently announced a price freeze across all journals for the year 2021.

Authors will be able to publish in these journals in open access, free of charge. Articles will be published under a CC-BY 4.0 license allowing authors to retain the copyright and others to share and adapt the content. A Creative Commons license also enables authors to be fully compliant with the open access requirements of their institution or funding organisation(s).

The Subscribe to Open (S2O) model marks an important milestone for EDP Sciences in its longstanding commitment to open access. This model represents a sustainable and ethical way of transitioning journals to open access. There is no lock-in; the decision as to whether the content will be open or closed is made annually based on subscription income received.

Subscribe to Open (S20) is one of the transformative models that aims to move subscription journals to open access. S2O was initiated by Annual Reviews and was recently embraced by Berghahn Books. Although a relative newcomer, this innovative model has quickly become an accepted approach to achieving open access and builds on collaborative initiatives such as SCOAP3 and Knowledge Unlatched.

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