The Royal Society has agreed a plan to make its eight world-class subscription journals fully open access by 2026. Under the ‘Subscribe to Open’ model, libraries subscribed to these journals will be asked to support the transition in 2026 through their subscriptions. If enough libraries continue their subscriptions, the journals will become freely available online and authors will no longer have to pay fees to publish.
The plan aims to remove Article Processing Charges (APCs) for open access articles, making research papers published by the Royal Society freely available to read and publish in for any author or reader. The Royal Society plans to repeat this offer in subsequent years while working with libraries, institutions, and consortia to establish more sustainable models of open access.
The move is seen as an exciting opportunity to strengthen the Society’s journals by reaching more readers and a wider range of researchers worldwide. The plan aligns with the Royal Society’s ongoing review on the Future of scientific publishing and continues its tradition of innovation in scholarly communication.
Source: https://royalsociety.org/news/2025/08/subscribe-to-open