Taylor & Francis expands diamond OA model with new CPOP journals for 2026
Taylor & Francis has announced an expansion of its diamond open access (OA) model, Collective Pathway to Open Publishing (CPOP), through new agreements with Jisc in the UK and CAUL in Australasia. Collective support has enabled six additional journals to transition to open access for their 2026 volumes, allowing researchers worldwide to publish without paying article publishing charges (APCs).
CPOP has been developed as a new OA model for Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) journals, combining funding from OA agreements, institutional support, and read-access fees. Under the model, journals transition to OA one volume at a time, contingent on sufficient annual support, with no APCs required from authors. It also incorporates specialist content such as book reviews, systematic reviews, and practitioner articles – formats often excluded from traditional OA agreements but central to HSS publishing.
The six journals joining CPOP for 2026 are Australian Archaeology, Contemporary British History, Critical Studies in Education, Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, King’s Law Journal, and Studies in Theatre & Performance. All are based in the UK or Australasia and have strong regional authorship.
The addition of these titles supports the transition to open access in disciplines such as Arts & Humanities and Education, where OA funding has increasingly been driven by agreements. In 2025, 81% of OA research in Arts & Humanities journals and 73% in Education was funded through such agreements.
Two journals that joined CPOP in its first year, Nordic Psychology and Nordic Social Work Research, have met the required thresholds to remain open access in 2026. Together, they published 71 OA articles in 2025 and have recorded more than 43,500 downloads since their conversion in April 2025.
Anna Vernon, Head of Research Licensing, Jisc, said: “Jisc is committed to working with the research community to support open access approaches that are inclusive and sustainable. Pilots like Collective Pathway to Open Publishing help explore collective models that work for disciplines where APC based routes are less effective, enabling valued journals to transition to open access in ways that reflect the needs of their communities.”
Bob Gerrity, University Librarian at Monash University and Chair of the CAUL Taylor & Francis Negotiation Working Group, said: “CAUL is taking a multi-pronged approach to advancing a sustainable open research ecosystem and supports the expansion of open access publishing models that meet the varied needs of research disciplines. The Taylor & Francis Collective Pathway to Open Publishing model will transition three journals in the Australasian region from partial to full open access, enabling CAUL Members and the wider community to engage with research without cost barriers. CAUL supports the exploration of this new model and welcomes the prospect of further journals relevant to our region being included in the model in future years.”
Cathie Warburton, CEO at the Australian Library and Information Association, said: “ALIA welcomes the CPOP model from Taylor & Francis which facilitates a significant increase in the number of open access articles in our professional journal JALIA. We acknowledge the important work done by CAUL in making this possible.”
Alex Robinson, Managing Director Academic and Chief Commercial Officer at Taylor & Francis, said: “CPOP is one of several pilot ideas we’re exploring in order to offer equitable open access options for the Humanities and Social Sciences, subject areas which otherwise have limited funding for OA publishing. I’m very grateful to our partners at CAUL, Jisc and the Nordic consortia, as well as the journals’ societies and editors, for their enthusiastic support of this innovative approach to OA.”