We’re thrilled to share a significant milestone at DOAJ: as of March 6th, 2024, we’ve introduced journal labels as a new feature in our metadata. This marks an exciting development, allowing us to tag journals with specific labels that reflect their unique characteristics.
The first label we’ve gone live with is for the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model. This is a big step for us as we continue to support open access and the evolving landscape of scholarly publishing.
Over 60 S2O journals labeled
Through our ongoing collaboration with the S2O Community of Practice (S2O CoP), we are happy to share that 61 journals have now received the S2O label.
The S2O CoP brings together librarians, scholarly publishers, funders, scholars, and other stakeholders worldwide to collaborate, exchange insights, and promote best practices for the S2O model in scholarly publishing—all with the shared mission of making scholarly communication freely accessible for the public good.
You can now easily identify the S2O logo in our journal search results and on individual journal pages.
What does this mean for you?
The S2O label isn’t just a badge—it’s an important indicator of the journal’s commitment to open access. By tagging journals with this label, we aim to provide clarity for readers and researchers. You’ll be able to see the label both in the search results and on the journal’s Table of Contents (ToC) page. It’s a new way to highlight open access models and help users navigate the world of scholarly publishing more easily.
What is the ‘Subscribe to Open’ model?
S2O is a “subscription model that allows a publisher to convert journals from gated access to Open Access (OA). Institutional subscription revenue is collected and, assuming all subscribers participate, the publisher commits to publishing that year’s content OA. This model relies on institutional subscriptions, not voluntary donations.” For more information, visit the Subscribe to Open Community Of Practice page.
How does this update impact our metadata?
With this new feature, we’ve updated our metadata in two key ways:
- CSV Update: The journal CSV has a new column to indicate a journal’s S2O status
- JSON Update: The label is exposed in our JSON through a new ‘bibjson.labels’ field
Next steps
With the launch of the S2O label, DOAJ continues to support journals transitioning to open access and looks forward to welcoming more journals that have made this important shift.
We are also exploring other labels that might be of use to the community. Some examples we are considering are: Diamond, Flipped journals, Mirror journals, preserved via JASPER. If you have an idea for a label, please get in touch.
Our Guide to Applying will soon be updated to include a dedicated section for S2O journals.
