Glossary
Diamond open access
Diamond open access journals charge neither readers nor authors. Costs are carried by a university, a learned society, a ministry or a consortium. The model is common in Latin America, in continental Europe and among society titles, and it predates the author-pays model.
Reviewed 1 August 2026
In practice
Why it is easy to overlook
Diamond journals have no commercial reason to advertise. They rarely appear in publisher marketing, and aggregators built around fees tend not to surface them.
Quality
The absence of a charge says nothing about standards. A substantial share of diamond titles sit in the first quartile of their fields.
Common misconceptions
Free to publish does not mean unreviewed. Diamond journals run peer review like any other.