In 2025, Hopkins Press #StepsUP Our S2O Initiative

Hopkins Press is excited to launch our 2025 Subscribe to Open (S2O) initiative. Built around our current journal collections model, S2O will launch via Project MUSE for the 2025 calendar year subscription term for participating journals.

What is S2O?
S2O is an equitable open access model for scholarly journals that enables subscription journals to offer their current content as open access (OA), without the article processing charges that have traditionally supported open access content. S2O contributes to a more equitable and accessible scholarly publishing ecosystem, increases each journal's visibility, and supports the advancement of knowledge across disciplines.

S2O offers journal publishers a model to expand the reach and impact of their scholarly content. By participating in S2O, publishers can transition that year’s journal content to open access without sacrificing financial stability. This model leverages library and institutional subscriptions to sustain open access, ensuring that high-quality research is freely available to a global audience. 

Researcher surveys indicate that the number of researchers perceiving OA positively and the proportion of authors electing to publish open access has been growing steadily from year to year. Increasingly, authors recognize the benefits of open access for research reach, impact, and increased citations.

So far, more than 100 journals are already committed to the 2025 S20 launch, including 43 of the journals published by Hopkins Press.

How will S2O Work? 
Beginning in 2025, in any year that the S2O program is successful, all new content from participating journals will be open access via Project MUSE immediately upon publication.

Each year, Project MUSE will set the minimum sustainability threshold required to fund the participating S2O journals that year. If the sustainability threshold is reached, the current year’s content of the participating titles will be opened to all readers. If the threshold is not reached, that year’s content will remain gated. 

The 2025 S2O program will apply only to new issues, and will not open the backfile years — older content will still require licensed access to valuable journal backfile content provides an incentive for libraries to continue to subscribe to Project MUSE. The initiative is designed to maintain revenue by establishing a 98% sustainability threshold, and supporting publisher revenue through guaranteed minimum royalties.

Get more information! 
We presented 2025 S2O initiative in an hour-long webinar this fall, titled “Subscribe to Open: Connecting the Scholarly Community with an Equitable OA Model.” This webinar is available to the public on YouTube.

Join us as we launch this exciting initiative! For more information, we offer a detailed FAQ, as well as targeted information for journal publishers, libraries and institutions, and sales agents and consortia. Additionally, for those who would like to help us promote the benefits of our S2O program, we offer a handy promotional toolkit.