Why the subscription model is under pressure
The traditional model funds a journal through institutional subscriptions, with readers or their libraries paying for access. Its advantage is simplicity: the society sets a price, libraries pay it, and revenue is predictable year to year.
Its weakness has become harder to ignore. Research funders from national research councils to major philanthropic funders increasingly require that funded research be published open access. Authors who must comply with these mandates will simply take their manuscripts elsewhere if a journal cannot offer a compliant route to publication. For a society journal competing for submissions, that is a direct threat to editorial quality, not just to revenue.
The open access alternative and its own costs
Open access removes the reader-side paywall, but it does not remove the cost of running a journal: editorial management, peer review coordination, copyediting, typesetting, hosting, and indexing all still need to be funded. Most OA models simply move that cost elsewhere.
The most common mechanism is the Article Processing Charge (APC), where authors or more often their institutions or funders pay a fee to publish. This works well when authors have access to funder support, but it can create real equity problems in fields or regions where that support is thin. It can also create a perception, fair or not, that a journal's business model rewards volume over selectivity.
A quieter but growing alternative is Diamond Open Access: no charge to authors, no charge to readers. Diamond OA journals are typically funded directly by the society, an institution, or grant support, and tend to be smaller in scale. They preserve editorial independence most cleanly, but they require a funding source willing to absorb the full cost which is exactly the constraint most society publishers are trying to solve.
Subscribe to Open: a middle path worth watching
One model gaining real traction among established society publishers is Subscribe to Open (S2O). Under S2O, existing subscribers largely libraries and consortia are asked to continue paying at roughly their existing subscription level. If enough of them do, the journal's content for that year is published fully open access, with no APCs charged to authors. If the target isn't met, the journal reverts to its standard subscription model for the year.
The Royal Society's move to convert its subscription journals to S2O for 2026 is a useful case study for any society weighing its options. The appeal is straightforward: it doesn't require inventing a new revenue stream, it removes the author-side equity problem that comes with APCs, and it lets a publisher shift to full open access without a single disruptive cliff-edge. The risk is equally clear it depends on continued voluntary support from institutions that have every incentive to eventually stop paying for something that is freely available regardless of their contribution.
What this means for a society deciding its model
There is no universally correct answer, but there is a clearer way to frame the decision. A society should be explicit about which of these it is actually optimising for:
- Revenue predictability — subscription and hybrid models offer the most stability, at the cost of restricting readership.
- Author equity — Diamond OA and S2O avoid shifting costs onto authors, but both depend on a funder or a critical mass of institutional goodwill.
- Reach and visibility — full OA models, including S2O, generally expand readership and citation potential, which matters for a journal's long-term standing and for author recruitment.
- Editorial independence — models funded directly by the society (Diamond OA, S2O) tend to preserve more control over editorial decisions than models built around high-volume APC income.
None of these trade-offs disappear by choosing a model — they simply move to a different part of the organisation. A society considering a transition should model the financial impact under realistic subscriber or funder retention rates before committing publicly, and should be honest with its editorial board about what each model requires from authors, reviewers, and members.
Where DevSupport fits in
We work with medical societies and academic publishers on exactly this kind of decision — modelling the financial impact of a transition, structuring the editorial and workflow changes it requires, and building the communications strategy that keeps authors, reviewers, and members informed through the change. If your society is weighing its publishing model for 2026 and beyond, we would be glad to talk it through.