v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 1,610 entries across 24 domains · CC-BY 4.01,610 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack EStablev2026.1

Pure gold journal

A scholarly journal that makes its articles immediately available online to the reader without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 17 Aug 2026

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Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A journal launched specifically as fully open access, funded through APCs, where every article is freely readable at publication.
Is an instance
A diamond open access journal, subsidised by a scholarly society, that publishes every article open access and charges no APC to authors, still a pure gold journal since every article is open.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A subscription journal offering an optional paid open-access route for individual articles is a hybrid journal, not pure gold, because most of its content remains paywalled.

Editorial commentary

A pure gold journal is a scholarly journal in which every published article is open access from the moment of publication, with no subscription-only content. The term distinguishes this fully open model from a hybrid journal, which mixes subscription and paid-open-access articles within the same title, and it is often used interchangeably with open access journal for a title where every article is open regardless of funding route.

Pure gold status describes the journal’s access model, not its funding model: a pure gold journal may charge an article processing charge (APC) to cover its costs, may be subsidised by an institution, society, or funder, or may run APC-free as diamond open access. What all pure gold journals share is that no reader anywhere pays, and no article in the journal sits behind a paywall regardless of whether its author paid a fee. See Gold vs Green vs Diamond vs Hybrid Open Access for how this model compares with the others.

Also known as

open access journal · gold open access · born OA

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Pure gold journal"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/pure-gold-journal" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/pure-gold-journal",
  "name": "Pure gold journal",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/pure-gold-journal",
  "description": "A scholarly journal that makes its articles immediately available online to the reader without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/knowledge-equity#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/pure-gold-journal",
  "sameAs": [
    "open access journal",
    "gold open access",
    "born OA"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-08-17T01:54:11",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

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