Making Subscribe to Open Visible Across the Research Ecosystem

Sharing trusted, scalable information on open and subscription-based publishing models

Publisher at a Glance

• Publisher type: Major international academic publisher; leading publisher in the humanities and social sciences

• OA Switchboard role: Publisher participant

• Primary use case: Directly informing research funders, institutions, and consortia about articles published under different business models, including increasing visibility for Subscribe to Open (S2O)

The Challenge

De Gruyter Brill currently has 124 journals in its Subscribe to Open (S2O) program, marking a major milestone in its ongoing commitment to making high-quality research accessible worldwide. Subscribe to Open is a sustainable and equitable approach to transitioning subscription-based journals to open access, one year at a time. It builds on existing library relationships and subscription processes, without imposing publication fees on authors.

De Gruyter Brill has been a long-standing participant in OA Switchboard, sending publication metadata in a standardized format to targeted research institutions, consortia, and funders for publications under different business models and for different purposes. These purposes generally include improving discoverability and visibility, as well as easing integration into the wider scholarly communications ecosystem and downstream systems.

For S2O in particular, it is important that both subscribing and non-subscribing institutions have clear visibility of the journal’s business model. Achieving this level of transparency at scale, however, is not straightforward.

The Approach

For all activated De Gruyter Brill journals, event-driven, article-level alerts with relevant metadata are delivered at the point of publication. These alerts are sent to targeted institutions, consortia, and research funders via so-called P1-messages.

P1-messages are selectively delivered to institutions linked to authors’ affiliations (and then routed to consortia) and to research funders that supported the underlying research reported in the article. Since 2025, De Gruyter Brill has included a journal-level indicator in the P1-messages to show that a journal is published under the S2O model. This information is shared with both subscribing and non-subscribing institutions, as well as with research funders.

The Impact

De Gruyter Brill is the largest Subscribe to Open publisher to report relevant publications to research funders, institutions, and consortia in a timely and targeted way through OA Switchboard.

By sending P1 messages, De Gruyter Brill gained a direct and scalable way to communicate with libraries, consortia, and research funders about S2O—supporting transparency around the model and increasing awareness of journals participating in the program.

Key Takeaway

OA Switchboard supports Subscribe to Open at scale by enabling publishers to transparently communicate journal- and article-level information to both subscribing and non-subscribing institutions and funders—strengthening visibility, trust, and understanding of the S2O model across the research ecosystem.