GoKawiilMany journals are removing their free access and changing to fee-based publishing models.Credit: hamzaturkkol/iStock via Getty
Hundreds of academic journals that launched as free to publish in and free to read have ended up switching to a fee-charging model, according to a study that examined the fate of titles using the diamond open-access (OA) model.
The analysis, published as a preprint earlier this year1, identified 440 titles that initially used the diamond OA model — in which publication costs are covered by sources such as institutions, non-profit organizations and libraries, rather than readers and authors — but changed to other publishing models between 2009 and 2026.
Of the 440 titles, 369 switched to gold OA, under which authors pay an article-processing charge (APC); 52 changed to hybrid OA, for which subscription-based titles make individual articles free to read for an extra fee; and 19 went entirely behind a paywall.
The APCs that the journals began implementing ranged from US$8 to $5,300 and were mostly dependent on the type of publisher: what the authors refer to as ‘professional publishers’ typically started charging higher APCs, whereas research organizations and society publishers mostly started charging lower amounts.
Over the past few years, journals have increasingly moved away from diamond OA, the analysis revealed.
The authors, led by Lisa Matthias, an information scientist at the Humboldt University of Berlin, found at least one ‘diamond fracture’ — the term they used to describe journals that moved away from diamond OA — every year since 2009. “But they do seem to be accelerating, with the majority occurring from 2020 onwards and 2025 marking the highest annual count in the data set,” the researchers report.
So, why are some journals moving away from a model that has been popular with both authors and readers?
Tracking diamond fractures
The diamond OA model has been used by academic journals for decades, but its popularity took off in the late 2010s, stemming partly from frustration that the high APCs of various journals were pricing out some researchers, especially those in lower-income regions. A 2021 analysis estimated that, at the time, there were as many as 29,000 active diamond OA journals worldwide2.
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