Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A subscription journal that offers authors the option to pay an APC so their individual article is freely readable while the rest of the issue remains behind a paywall.
- Is an instance
A transformative agreement in which a library consortium's subscription payment to a publisher is bundled with a set number of APC-free hybrid open-access publications for its authors.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A journal where every article is open access regardless of payment status is a pure gold or fully open-access journal, not a hybrid journal.
- Not an instance
A subscription journal with no open-access option at all is a closed-access (toll-access) journal, not hybrid.
Editorial commentary
A hybrid journal charges institutions or readers a subscription for access to its content overall, but allows individual authors to pay an article processing charge (APC) to make their specific article freely available at the point of publication. The subscription and the open-access option coexist within the same title: most articles in a hybrid journal remain paywalled, while a minority are open access because an APC was paid for them.
This dual model is the source of the “double dipping” criticism levelled at hybrid journals: a publisher can, in principle, collect both the subscription revenue that funds the journal overall and the APC revenue for the individual open articles within it, unless subscription prices are demonstrably reduced to offset OA income. Because of this concern, several major funders and library consortia have moved to exclude hybrid-journal APCs from what they will pay for. Plan S, for example, does not treat hybrid open access as compliant except where an article is published under an eligible transformative arrangement, and several national consortia now negotiate agreements that fund publishing only in fully open-access journals, not hybrid ones.
Hybrid journal should not be confused with a pure gold journal or an open access journal, where every article is open access regardless of whether an APC was charged. See Gold vs Green vs Diamond vs Hybrid Open Access for how the four models compare, and Hybrid Open Access Journals Explained for a fuller walkthrough including funder policy treatment.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-term="Hybrid journal"
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"description": "A subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access at point of publication. This status typically requires the payment of a specific publication fee (also called an article processing charge or APC) to the publisher.",
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"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
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"dateModified": "2026-08-17T01:53:53",
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