Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A journal listed in DOAJ where 100% of articles, including the back catalogue, are freely readable with no subscription option offered to any reader
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A journal where some articles are free (because the author paid an APC) but others sit behind a subscription paywall is a hybrid journal, not a pure gold journal, even though some of its content is open access
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 anywhere in the title, including its archive. 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. See Gold vs Green vs Diamond vs Hybrid Open Access for how this sits alongside the other access models.
Access model vs. funding model
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 production 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 sits behind a paywall regardless of whether its author paid a fee.
How to verify a journal really is pure gold
“Gold open access” is sometimes used loosely in journal marketing, so verification matters, particularly against predatory-journal risk. Check the journal’s listing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which vets titles against open-access and editorial-standards criteria before indexing; confirm on the journal’s own site that no subscription or pay-to-read option exists for any article, current or archived; and where a funder mandate is in play, check the title against a Plan S Journal Checker Tool result rather than trusting a publisher’s self-description alone.
Why the distinction matters in practice
Funder open-access mandates (see Plan S) commonly recognise publication in a pure gold or diamond journal as automatically compliant, while a hybrid-journal article may need an additional APC payment or a compliant self-archiving route to satisfy the same mandate — the distinction is directly relevant to compliance checking and APC budget planning.
Also known as
born OA
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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