Hundreds of ‘free’ academic journals have started charging fees | Nature

"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."