JSTOR recently announced that Path to Open, a community-supported open access monograph program, will continue as an ongoing program following its three-year pilot phase.

Launched in 2023, Path to Open is a community-supported model where participating libraries gain early access to newly published university press books that transition to open access after 2–3 years, supporting bibliodiversity and enabling sustainable open access at scale.

“Path to Open was designed in partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and university presses to test whether a collaborative model could align the interests of libraries, publishers, and authors to expand access to scholarly work,” said Kevin Guthrie, President of ITHAKA and Managing Director of JSTOR. “We are now seeing compelling evidence that this approach can do what it set out to do.”

Pilot results included:

  • Strong and growing community participation: Nearly 300 participating libraries and more than 50 university presses and scholarly publishers
  • An exceptional, diverse list of new scholarly books: The corpus will include 1,000 works across the arts, humanities, and social science disciplines by the end of 2026
  • Expansive, global usage: Immediate, regular use of books at participating institutions that increased 440% over full year 2025 in the first three months of 2026 once books became open access

“BLC has seen firsthand how Path to Open delivers real impact for libraries, authors, publishers, and, most importantly, the communities we serve,” said Charlie Barlow, Executive Director of the Boston Library Consortium. “We’ve seen steady growth in participation across BLC member institutions alongside strong usage of newly published titles, demonstrating the value of this shared investment model.

The significant increase in usage globally once titles transition to open access underscores the long-term impact of this approach. We’re delighted to see JSTOR continue the program beyond its pilot phase, signaling a durable, collaborative model for expanding access to scholarly content.”

Interested libraries and publishers can participate in Path to Open, or register to join an upcoming webinar to hear from active participants.