In January 2021 Pluto Journals took the step of flipping all 21 of our Journals into Open Access, which means that all articles are free to read, hopefully creating a wider, more diverse and truly international readership. By the end of January 2022, our Usage statistics told us that our portfolio of Journals had increased their usage by a staggering 650%. Over the figures in 2020 and by 850% over the figures for 2019.

If ever there was a success story this was it.

Some of the most impressive growth was in Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation with +1000% growth and 143,000 usage and Islamophobia Studies Journal with +8000% growth and 141,000 usage which demonstrates that Pluto Journals are delivering significant and relevant scholarly articles in a rapidly changing world. When we looked at the figures in detail we saw that the Journals that had increased the fastest were our newest Journals. Equally the lowest growth was from the oldest Journals who already had the highest usage in 2020 i.e before we entered the Open community.

Our editors were pleased, and of course the whole family in PJ were too.

There was another reason to be pleased. Pluto Journals like its namesake Pluto Books, works within the radical tradition of Publishing within the English language. Open scholarly Journals articles therefore enables us to offer educational material of the highest standards free to users.   There is something truly satisfying in this achievement.

We would like to thank our original Host JSTOR for pushing us down this line. To Knowledge Unlatched to making it happen and to ScienceOpen in taking up the challenge in taking us into this field professionally.

Lastly there are our Advisors, whom we lean on to help and support us in taking this near evolutionary move. Professor John Willinksy, Pippa Smart and Simon Rallison. At key moments their advice helped to maintain the momentum on a move that took us some courage.

Roger van Zwanenberg

February 2022