(22 Sep 2026) 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 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?
Read more here.
