Libraries participating in Path to Open

Use the Path to Open: Communications toolkit for librarians to promote your participation in the program. The toolkit offers customizable messaging, email and social media templates, and promotional guidance to help raise awareness, spotlight your institution, and strengthen connections with the academic community. Resources also celebrate the first 100 Path to Open titles that became open access. Librarians are invited to collaborate with JSTOR Marketing on social media promotions, success stories, and other opportunities to showcase their experience with the program.

Yes. While this is currently at the chapter level—as with other ebooks on Books at JSTOR—we are developing the ability to loan all chapters per request.

Libraries participating in Path to Open receive access to 300 new monographs each year, along with 600 titles from the previous two years. In the third calendar year after publication, each annual group of 300 titles becomes openly available to readers worldwide.

This delayed open access period reflects the economics of monograph publishing, where titles require significant upfront investment and rely on multiple revenue streams over time. Recent research by Ithaka S+R and the Association of University Presses highlights the importance of balancing open access goals with sustainable revenue models for scholarly books.¹ By sharing investment across institutions, Path to Open creates a model that aligns with existing library acquisition workflows and budget structures, while giving participating libraries immediate access to more frontlist titles at a lower cost per book. At the same time, it supports scalable open access publishing and long-term access to scholarship for presses and authors.

¹ Brown, Laura, et al. “Print Revenue and Open access Monographs: A University Press Study.” Ithaka S+R Research Report, 2023. DOI: 10.18665/sr.319642.

Not as individual ebooks on JSTOR or through other library ebook sales channels. However, a Path to Open title may also be available to libraries through a participating publisher’s Publisher Collection for the same publication year. Publishers may continue to offer print editions through library and consumer sales channels and electronic editions through direct-to-consumer platforms such as Kindle. Once the titles become open access, they are freely available to all users on JSTOR and other supporting platforms.

Yes. Path to Open titles may also be included in a participating publisher’s Publisher Collection for the same publication year. Path to Open participants receive access to titles in each annual Path to Open collection until they become open access. Publisher Collections participants receive a perpetual license to all of a publisher’s current-year titles, including its Path to Open titles.

For example, a library participating in both Path to Open and a university press’s 2027 Publisher Collection would have access to that press’s 2027 Path to Open titles through both programs. If the library does not renew the Publisher Collection in 2028, it will retain perpetual access to the press’s 2027 titles, which will later become open access according to the Path to Open schedule.

Catalog feeds are sent out to partners such as GOBI and ProQuest to identify the titles that are available on JSTOR in Path to Open. Print purchases made through these partners will include a notification of the ebook version being available through JSTOR’s Path to Open program.

The University of Michigan Press and MIT Press are solutions for individual presses. Path to Open supports over 50 presses working together and supporting each other in open access publishing. De Gruyter’s Open Access Transformation Packages and their not-for-profit foundation eBound do not have the scale and level of publisher participation as Path to Open.

No. Access is only available during the year that an institution pays the annual subscription fee. If at any time a subscription is not renewed, access will be suspended. Unless an annual subscription fee is paid again in the future, access will not be available for these titles until they are converted to open access.

Updated feeds will be provided to all discovery services providers we currently partner with and who provide ebooks from Books at JSTOR.

Since this is a collection that will not change daily or even weekly, records will be provided as any new titles are added to the program and updated through OCLC once a week.

Yes, Path to Open titles are peer reviewed and subject to the same rigorous editorial standards as other scholarly monographs published by participating presses. Each year, JSTOR’s editorial team selects 300 new monographs from titles submitted, considering demand, potential impact, and representation.

Title lists will be published every spring and fall, months ahead of publication, which matches the way publishers send their information to resellers. Publishers will be sending their print and direct-to-consumer versions to their normal sales channels. We will be publishing lists on the Path to Open site, and email participants lists that identify the titles that are available in Path to Open as soon as each season’s list is finalized. Please note that publishers may be submitting titles well in advance of robust metadata becoming available, so there is a chance the official title will change before publication.

No. Publishers do a careful review of all rights being secured prior to publishing a title in Path to Open.

Path to Open titles become open access three years after the cohort year for which they are selected. JSTOR generally accepts titles based on the copyright year in the calendar year they are first published. For example, books selected for the 2023 cohort became open access during the first week of January 2026, and books selected for the 2026 cohort will become open access on JSTOR in January 2029. If a book is published later than expected or has a copyright year later than its cohort year, it will still become open access according to the cohort year for which it was selected.

Just like other licensed and open access books on JSTOR, usage for Path to Open titles will be available for participating libraries to download from the JSTOR Admin portal. The reports will include both licensed usage during the embargo period and open access usage after the titles are opened up. Please refer to our support pages for more information on how to access usage statistics for JSTOR books. JSTOR will also be releasing annual updates on the library participation and overall usage of the Path to Open program to evaluate and measure the impact of the program across the academic community.

No action is required for most libraries. Titles that have reached their three-year threshold will automatically move from the Books at JSTOR: Path to Open collections to the Books at JSTOR: Open Access collections.

• KBART title lists: The flipped titles will be removed from the Path to Open KBART list and added to the Open Access KBART list automatically.
• Institutional holdings: The collection code in your institution’s holdings file will change from “P2OCOR” to “OA.” You may update your local records if needed.
• MARC records (OCLC): Titles will move from the Path to Open Corpus Collection to the Open Access Collection in OCLC’s Collection Manager. Libraries may wish to review MARC record delivery settings for potential DELETE records.
• Usage reporting: Usage data prior to the transition will remain available in Path to Open reports; future usage will appear in Open Access Usage Reports.

For additional questions, contact support@jstor.org.

After Path to Open titles become open access, institutions may notice a decrease in their licensed Path to Open usage, and a corresponding increase in open access usage. Once the transition occurs, all subsequent usage for these titles will appear in the open access usage reports.

Like other open access books on JSTOR, Path to Open titles see a significant increase in usage once they become openly available. Early results from the first 100 Path to Open books confirm this impact, with usage increasing by more than 886% in the first six months of open access, and readership expanding from 16 to 184 countries (compared to the licensed-access period (October 2023–December 2025).).