Born Open Access: Definition & Examples

Born open access

Commercial or non-profit publishers established for the sole purpose of publishing Open Access (OA) journals. They normally make use of the Creative Commons Attribution License for their publications. Authors usually retain their copyrights and users are needed to acknowledge and cite the authors in future references.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 17 Aug 2026

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Born open access describes a journal or publisher designed and launched to publish open access content from the outset, rather than converting to open access later. Commercial and non-profit publishers in this category exist for the sole purpose of publishing OA journals; they typically license content under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, let authors retain copyright in their own work, and require only that later users acknowledge and cite the original authors.

How “born” OA differs from converted and hybrid OA

The distinction matters because publishing history shapes both a journal’s business model and a reader’s expectations:

A born-OA journal has no legacy subscription content to protect — every article it has ever published is open, so there is no mixed archive and no need to track an article-by-article OA status.
A hybrid journal, by contrast, publishes both subscription articles and, for an added author-paid fee, individual open access articles within the same subscription-access title — the OA status varies article by article.
A subscription journal that later flips its entire title to open access (sometimes called a “converted” or “flipped” journal) was not born open access, even though it may function identically to one going forward — its back catalogue typically remains behind a paywall unless separately opened.

Born-OA publishing is closely related to, but not identical with, what CASRAI’s vocabulary separately defines as a pure gold journal — see that entry for the more precise gold-OA business-model definition; “born open access” here emphasizes the publisher’s founding intent and full-catalogue openness rather than the funding mechanism specifically.

What this means in practice for authors and research offices

Because a born-OA publisher’s entire catalogue is open by design, a research office checking funder OA-mandate compliance for an article in a born-OA journal generally does not need to check per-article licensing options the way it would for a hybrid title — the CC BY (or equivalent) license applies uniformly. Directories such as the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) are commonly used to confirm a journal’s OA status and licensing terms before submission.

Worked example

PLOS ONE and other PLOS titles were launched specifically as open access journals; every article they have ever published carries an open license from first publication, with no subscription-only back catalogue to account for.

Counter-example

A long-running subscription journal that introduces a paid “open access option” for individual articles is not born open access — it is a hybrid journal, since most of its content, and its full historical archive, remains behind a subscription paywall.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is “born open access” the same as “gold open access”?

They overlap but describe different things. Gold open access describes the route by which a specific article became open (published open, typically via an article-processing charge or diamond/no-fee model). Born open access describes the publisher or journal’s founding design — open from its very first issue, with no historical subscription content.

Can a born-OA journal charge an article processing charge (APC)?

Yes. Being born open access describes the journal’s origin and full-catalogue openness, not its specific funding model — a born-OA journal can be funded through APCs, institutional subsidy, or a no-fee diamond model.

How is a born-OA journal different from a hybrid journal?

A born-OA journal’s entire catalogue is open; a hybrid journal mixes subscription-access and (for a fee) individually open articles within the same title, so OA status must be checked article by article.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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