Jisc has announced its support for a new global open access project, Subscribe to Open.
The initiative, from Californian non-profit publisher Annual Reviews, is a scheme bidding to change some of the world’s leading review journals from gated to open access.
The aim is to instigate a pilot this year, offering five titles, using existing global subscription revenue.
This year’s volume of the Annual Review of Cancer Biology is the first to switch, with content published using a CC BY licence.
The other titles slated for conversion are Annual Reviews covering environment and resources; nuclear and particle science; political science; and public health.
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“Annual Reviews appreciates the support from the Jisc consortium for Subscribe to Open, which provides an immediate and practical path to opening a vast body of research output that would otherwise remain gated,” said the publisher’s president and editor-in-chief, Richard Gallagher.
“In supporting the transition to open access it is important to pilot a diversity of models,” said director of licensing at Jisc, Caren Milloy.
“This global initiative offers a long-term open access business model that can help our members in the transition toward OA in a cost-effective and sustainable manner.”
The announcement of the pilot follows news of Jisc’s four-year ‘read and publish’ deal, giving UK university researchers free and open access publishing in every Wiley journal.