Editorial Announcement

160 years after the first issue of the Journal of Economics and Statistics has been published, the journal changes its publication model from a subscription-based approach to a model which is called “subscribe to open” (S2O). I will briefly describe the implications of this major shift for readers, authors and libraries and hope that all of you will continue to support the Journal in this new framework over the years to come.

The main change for readers will be that all new articles published in 2023 will be available open access, i.e. they will have access from everywhere in the world at any point in time, whether or not they have access to the journal via their institution. Obviously, the editors expect that this will lead to a higher visibility of the Journal and its content, which might also result in more citations to papers published in the Journal.

For authors, the new model offers an attractive access to open access publication as they are requested, e.g. in funding schemes of the EU such as Horizon Europe or the German Research Foundation (DFG). The major difference to classical open access journals is that authors do not have to pay article processing charges (APCs). Thus, also authors from institutions with limited financial resources can publish in open access if their paper meets the aim and scope of the Journal and passes the scientific review process. However, it should be noted that a publication of open access without fees for the authors can only be guaranteed for the current volume. For future volumes it will depend on the continuing agreement between publisher and subscribers.

So how is the S2O model financed? In a nutshell, the idea is that current subscribers to the journal extend their subscriptions and share the resulting benefit of open access with the scientific community. From the perspective of the university libraries, which are the most important subscribers, as a group they can share the benefits of providing service to the scientific community, support the transition to open access and avoid double payments (for the subscription and when supporting open access publication of individual articles). Also, only a continued subscription allows access to the backlist as the journal archive remains behind the paywall.

With the successful start of S2O in 2023, we – the editors of the Journal of Economics and Statistics and our publisher De Gruyter – would like to thank all subscribers for their support, and we hope that you will continue your subscriptions to allow for a lasting implementation of S2O. For further details, you might also refer to the information provided by De Gruyter under https://www.degruyter.com/publishing/publikationen/openaccess/open-access-artikel/subscribe-open.

Apart from the exiting news about the new publication model, I would also point out to you three new calls for papers for special issues on “Minimum Wages – Experiences of European Countries” (Guest Editors: Matthias Dütsch, Clements Ohlert, Christian Pfeifer, and Conny Wunsch) with deadline on May, 1st 2023, “Advancing Agent-Based Economics” (Guest Editors: Michael Neugart and Frank Westerhoff) with deadline on December, 1st 2023, and “Sports Economics” (Guest Editors: Bernd Frick, Thomas Peeters, Rob Simmons) with deadline on November, 30th 2023.