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Path to Open

High-quality titles with a high impact

Explore high-impact scholarship with Path to Open. Access diverse, peer-reviewed titles that strengthen research, teaching, and discovery across the humanities and social sciences.

Join Path to Open
A collage of eight book covers, including The Revolt of the Black Athlete, Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana, Prince’s Minneapolis, Mormon Barrio, Heritage, Tore All to Pieces, The Sons of Gunshooter, and An Anthropology of Global Immunization, displayed on a red background.

Advancing bibliodiversity with Path to Open

Hundreds of new, peer-reviewed titles are added to Path to Open each year. Participating libraries receive exclusive early access before the books transition to open access. The first 100 titles from 2023 reached that milestone in January 2026, becoming freely available to all.

Selected using a combination of JSTOR data and community review, the titles showcase impactful research, diverse scholarly perspectives, and timely topics across the humanities and social sciences. 

All Path to Open titles are DRM-free, offer unlimited user access, and are fully integrated with scholarly journals, research reports, images, and multimedia on JSTOR. 

Explore the titles

Heritage in the Body by Kristina Baines — blue cover featuring a silhouette filled with colorful plants and tropical imagery.
Experiments in Silence by Sana R. Chaudhry — cover depicting a collage of flowers, hands, butterflies, and a black crow.
Patterns of Sustaining Peace by Julia Leib — book cover featuring colorful geometric tiles with a blue title box overlay.
Women in the Orthodox Tradition by Ashley Marie Purpura — colorful painted icon of a woman holding a child, rendered in vivid reds, blues, and golds.
Phonographic Modernity edited by Fumitaka Yamauchi and Ying-Fen Wang — collage of colorful vintage record labels with a central black record label title.
Hip-Hop Civics by Jabari M. Evans — black cover featuring a diverse group of illustrated students in colorful clothing.
On Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone by Philip Ewell — minimalist black cover with pastel text and a colorful soundwave line.
The Vulnerability of Public Higher Education by Michael Bernard-Donals — book cover showing a murmuration of birds forming an abstract shape against a blue sky.
Maya Blue by Dean E. Arnold — close-up of a weathered blue-and-red ceramic bowl on a teal background.
Lost Literacies by Alex Beringer — book cover with teal background and vintage comic strip illustrations of a man and a dog.
Influential Machines: The Rhetoric of Computational Performance by Miles C. Coleman — geometric yellow and white book cover with large overlapping text.
Subjunctive Aesthetics by Carolyn Fornoff — pale green and gray cover with silhouettes of fish swimming overhead.
Violence and Inequality: An Archaeological History edited by Thomas P. Leppard and Sarah C. Murray — illustrated cover with a large fish swallowing smaller fish and a person fishing.
The Climate Crisis and Other Animals by Richard Twine — cover showing a lone lamb standing on a foggy road at sunrise.

The titles above showcase a growing collection of open access books now available on JSTOR. Download the full 2023 title list to discover all open titles, and explore the 2024 and 2025 lists, as well as 2026 releases, organized by  publisher, discipline, and more.

Download the 2023 title list (xlsx)
Download the 2024 title list (xlsx)
Download the 2025 title list (xlsx)
Download the 2026 title list (xlsx)

Learn more about Path to Open

Webinar title with colorful books
Event Open access

From Pilot to Impact: What Happens When JSTOR’s Path to Open Books Become Open?

August 6, 2026

Join us for a virtual Charleston webinar on Thursday, September 3, 2026, from 11:00 AM–12:00 PM ET. Hear from the Boston Library Consortium, University of Oregon, Liverpool University Press, Syracuse University Press, and JSTOR as they explore new evidence and community perspectives on the impact of the first 100 Path to Open titles after becoming open access.

A colored charcoal illustration of a woman reading on a bench
Event

Turning the Page on Path to Open: From Pilot to Program

May 6, 2026

Over the past three years, libraries, publishers, and partners have worked together to shape Path to Open, a Books at JSTOR initiative that supports the transition of high-quality scholarly monographs to open access at scale. With positive results and feedback, the pilot is now moving forward as an official JSTOR program. Watch this on-demand webinar to explore this important milestone and learn what it means for your library.

Three academic book covers arranged horizontally on a red background: Stories of Our Living Ephemera with illustrated flowers and a bird, Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism featuring a person in medieval-style clothing wearing headphones, and Transnational Families in Africa showing a tablet with images of people using digital technology.
Blog Open access

Celebrating 100 Path to Open books becoming open access

January 12, 2026

Path to Open has reached a major milestone: the first 100 scholarly books have officially flipped to open access on JSTOR. This post celebrates what that moment represents for libraries, publishers, and authors working together to expand global access to high-quality academic monographs.

EU Public Construction Law
Blog Access

Explore the latest titles in JSTOR’s Path to Open program November 2025

December 5, 2025

Explore new Path to Open titles on JSTOR supporting teaching and research. View November 2025 releases and access options.

A group of attendees sits at round tables in a warmly lit event space with exposed wooden beams and string lights. A panel of four speakers is seated at the front behind a white table, with a presentation screen behind them. Many attendees have red tote bags hanging from their chairs with a white “J 30 Years” logo, celebrating JSTOR’s 30th anniversary.
Blog Access

Sustainable books models and digital stewardship at Charleston 2025

November 26, 2025

At this year’s Charleston Conference, JSTOR hosted two lunch events. Highlights included updates on Path to Open, Publisher Collections, and JSTOR Seeklight’s growing role in AI-assisted metadata generation.

Illustrated graphic of books with simple line drawings in red and black, symbolizing the diversity of scholarly titles in the Path to Open collection.
Event Content solution

Syracuse University librarians, faculty, and publisher: Collaborating for tomorrow with Path to Open

November 18, 2025

This webinar featured Syracuse University speakers discussing how Path to Open supports authors, strengthens bibliodiversity, and expands global access to scholarship through a sustainable open-access model.

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