Subscription Pricing for Hybrid Journals

Our Policy 

Our aim is to act in a fair and responsible way to avoid our customers paying twice for OA content via article charges and subscription costs: so called "double dipping."

We will continually review and refine our pricing to ensure Sage continues to work with the best industry practices and that we maintain transparency around our calculations as well as our publishing service covered by APC’s.

1. Beginning with the 2015 subscription year, Sage globally discounted the subscription rate of journals where more than 5% of articles are published as Sage Choice (hybrid OA).
2. As a result, 70 journals have benefitted from a reduction in their planned price increase since we introduced the global discounting in 2015.
3. This discount to the subscription price is not reversed, even if the proportion of OA content falls in subsequent years.
4. For Hybrid journals in Sage Open Access Agreements: Where the proportion of OA revenue is lower than the proportion of OA content, e.g. as a result of Article Processing Charge (APC) discounts, or local (zero rated) offsetting initiatives offered, we will reduce the subscription price based on revenue rather than content.

How do we calculate the discounts?

1. Our calculations are based on the previous three years of data, using a rolling average to smooth out annual variations. For 2025, we have calculated that there are 17 new titles which have been discounted as they have reached the 5% threshold of content published as Sage Choice (hybrid OA). See list below under Newly Discounted Titles.
2. The discount applied to subscription titles will be based primarily on the proportion of content published as hybrid OA. E.g. if 5% of the content is OA, the price will be discounted by 5%.
3. Where the proportion of OA revenue is lower than the proportion of OA content, e.g. as a result of Article Processing Charge (APC) discounts, or local (zero rated) offsetting initiatives offered, we will reduce the subscription price based on revenue rather than content.
4. Sage continues to apply this methodology to all Sage owned journals and we do encourage all society partners, whom we publish journals on behalf of, to adopt this methodology.
5. Journals where there is very low APC OA revenue, low number of articles per year, or low subscription revenue may be excluded.

Newly Discounted Titles for 2025

The list below includes titles which have been newly discounted for 2025 as more than 5% of their articles are published as Sage Choice (Hybrid OA)

We only discount further if the proportion of Gold OA content increases. If it doesn’t, the discounted price remains the same. If the proportion decreases from the previous year we do not reverse the discount. This becomes the base price. To provide transparency we have listed all previous discounts (by the most recent year first) for all titles. 

Chronic Illness   4.2%

Environment and Planning B       3.6%

Evaluation          3.0%

International Journal of Bilingualism       4.9%

International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds, The   0.4%

International Journal of Robotics Research          1.4%

Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics              0.2%

Journal of Material Culture         1.9%

Journal of Planning Literature     2.1%

Journal of Service Research         0.0%

Journal of Vascular Access, The  0.2%

Language Testing            2.2%

Memory Studies              0.0%

NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy    2.6%

Progress in Human Geography   1.5%

Qualitative Health Research       3.0%

Second Language Research         2.6%

Full listing of discounted titles to date