The transition of ARVO journals to open access

Abstract

In January 2016, the three journals of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) transitioned to gold open access. Increased author charges were introduced to partially offset the loss of subscription revenue. Submissions to the two established journals initially dropped by almost 15% but have now stabilized. The transition has not impacted acceptance rates and impact factors, and article pageviews and downloads may have increased as a result of open access.