Presentation delivered at the OpenAIRE workshop on Sustainable non-APC publishing models (February 26-27 2019) in Bielefeld, Germany

1. ANNUAL REVIEWS
SUBSCRIBE TO OPEN PROGRAM
SUSTAINABILITY & SCALABILITY
KAMRAN NAIM
DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIPS & INITIATIVES

2. SUSTAINABILITY
To succeed in the long run, an OA transition model must:
• Provide sufficient incentive for subscribers to participate
• Ensure that subscribers continue to participate over time
• Reduce the cost and disruption of introducing a new model
• Satisfy university procurement policies that forbit donative payments

3. Subscribe to Open Sustainability
The Subscribe to Open (S2O) model satisfies each of these requirements. It:
• Appeals to the local economic self-interest of each subscriber individually
• Renews on a year to year basis, preventing institutions that value the content
from free riding
• Uses existing library procurement processes to minimize disruption
• Requires participation in S2O or a subscription to ensure access

4. Motivating Participation
• Institutions that have demand for journal content must participate in S2O to
ensure continued access
• Offering a discount for institutions makes S2O economically compelling
• Logically, and discount should provide sufficient incentive
• It is subscription, not a donation
• If participation levels are not sufficient, discount will be honored for S2O
customers: others will have to subscribe at the higher (undiscounted) price to
access content
• And potentially violate procurement policies

5. Ensuring stability
• S2O uses recurring one-year offers to determine whether journal content will be
opened or gated
• Making the offer recurring provides long-term revenue stability by eliminating
opportunities to free ride
• Ultimately aim is that S2O becomes routinized in library collection/acquisition
processes

6. No lock-in
• S2O only requires institutions to participate as long as institutions want to ensure
access to content
• It poses no more lock-in risk than the current subscription model

7. What about cancellations?
• As with subscriptions, institutions have material change in circumstances (e.g.
budget reductions, etc.)
• AR will need to plan for legitimate cancellations – counter by growing contributor
base

8. SCALABILITY
• Journal level: if successful, program will be scaled up to add more
journals to the offer
• For institutions: For (less than) the price of their subscription,
institutions will provide access beyond their institution, i.e. provide
tangible public benefit

13. BROADENING PARTICIPATION
• Although S2O is predicated on the ongoing support of subscribers, over
time some attrition may occur
• To counteract, the model can expand the base of support
• Target a secondary funding appeal at high-use institutions beyond the
original subscriber base
• Demonstrated demand should mean interest in supporting/sustaining
journal

14. BROADENING PARTICIPATION
• Funding appeal would need to be positioned fairly for core contributor
group
• Supplemental revenue could offset revenue lost over time through organic
attrition
• Potentially reduce participation feed from core subscriber group (thus
reducing attrition)

15. THANK YOU
QUESTIONS?
Kamran Naim
Director of Partnerships & Initiatives
knaim@annualreviews.org
@kamrannaim