UK: The Royal Society to move journals to full open access in 2026 through Subscribe to Open

"The Royal Society has agreed on plans that would make its journals fully open access in 2026 by adopting the ‘Subscribe to Open’ model", reports the British learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences on 06/08/2025.

The society states that libraries subscribing to Royal Society journals will now be asked to support Subscribe to Open in 2026 through their subscriptions. If sufficient libraries continue their subscriptions, the journals will be converted to open access for the year.

The goal is to "make research papers published in its eight world-class subscription journals freely available online and remove fees for authors to publish in them".

"This would mean the journals become free to read and publish in for any author or reader, not just those associated with a subscribed library. Under the current hybrid model, authors can choose to pay Article Processing Charges to make their article open access and available to read for free."

The society states that it will repeat the offer in subsequent years, while continuing to collaborate with libraries…