⇧

Subscribe to Open

Our five most-established journals switched to S2O

logo for Subscribe to Open (S2O)

MSP is happy to an­nounce that all 2025 art­icles in our Sub­scribe to Open pro­gram will be pub­lished open ac­cess — free to be read by every­one and with no au­thor charges.

These journ­als are:

This is made pos­sible thanks to sub­scrip­tion sup­port from the math­em­at­ic­al com­munity. We look for­ward to con­tin­ued com­munity par­ti­cip­a­tion and sup­port in the years to come.

Frequently asked questions  
Structure of our publishing costs  
Open math through S2O: an EDPS + EMS + MSP common webpage  
What is Subscribe to Open?

Sub­scribe to Open (S2O) is a prag­mat­ic and eth­ic­al ap­proach for con­vert­ing sub­scrip­tion journ­als to open ac­cess (OA; free and im­me­di­ate on­line ac­cess to re­search art­icles), one year at a time and without re­ly­ing on either au­thor charges (APCs) or ex­clus­ively on al­tru­ism.

S2O re­lies on the sup­port of the com­munity, and uses the lib­rar­ies’ ex­ist­ing pro­cesses for ac­quir­ing sub­scrip­tions. Lib­rar­ies are in­vited to com­mit to sub­scribe or re­new their sub­scrip­tion be­fore a dead­line early in the cal­en­dar year. For art­icles to be pub­lished in 2026, this dead­line is 15 Feb­ru­ary 2026.

  • If sup­port is suf­fi­cient, then that year’s art­icles will be pub­lished open ac­cess un­der a Cre­at­ive Com­mons li­cense.
  • If sup­port is in­suf­fi­cient, then the pay­wall is re­tained, as for a tra­di­tion­al sub­scrip­tion. Fur­ther, late sub­scribers who had not com­mit­ted to par­ti­cip­ate will now be charged a high­er price.
diagram for Subscribe to Open (S2O)

The only way for an in­sti­tu­tion to be guar­an­teed un­in­ter­rup­ted ac­cess and the best price is to par­ti­cip­ate (and com­mit be­fore the dead­line). All pay­ing sub­scribers will en­joy per­man­ent ac­cess to that year’s art­icles, one-year ac­cess to the journ­al’s en­tire back­list, and ac­cess to us­age stat­ist­ics. S2O is a sub­scrip­tion mod­el, not a vol­un­tary dona­tion. It funds a pub­lic good (open ac­cess to art­icles) by us­ing each in­sti­tu­tion’s pur­suit of its own in­terests.

The of­fer will be re­peated every year, with the open­ing of each year’s con­tent de­pend­ent on suf­fi­cient par­ti­cip­a­tion for that year.

We will ex­pect al­most full re­new­al of our sub­scrip­tions. If even a few cur­rent sub­scribers do not re­new, it is likely that we will not be able to make that year open ac­cess.

S2O is con­sidered a trans­form­at­ive agree­ment, sat­is­fies most fun­ders’ open-ac­cess re­quire­ments, and has been en­dorsed by a num­ber of open-ac­cess or­gan­iz­a­tions, in­clud­ing cO­Ali­tion S (see be­low).

Frequently asked questions  

Vis­it this page for fre­quently asked ques­tions about S2O. In par­tic­u­lar:

Ques­tion:  With S2O, we don’t know very far in ad­vance wheth­er con­tent will be open-ac­cess or not. Doesn’t this cre­ate un­cer­tainty for au­thors?

MSP’s policies have long been as re­laxed and open-friendly as pos­sible. Even if the S2O tar­get is not met and your art­icle can­not be pub­lished open ac­cess, our policies will still al­low you to sat­is­fy most open-ac­cess man­dates through the al­tern­at­ive, Green OA route. MSP au­thors are wel­comed to re­tain copy­right, to de­pos­it their work in open-ac­cess re­pos­it­or­ies, etc. For more about our policies for au­thors, please vis­it this page.

Other resources

MSP’s thoughts and approach to open access  
How we think of the scholarly journal