Diamond open access vs gold open access comes down to who pays: diamond OA charges neither author nor reader, funded instead by institutions, funders, or learned societies, while gold OA typically requires an author-facing article processing charge (APC) to make the published version free to read. Since cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy stopped funding transformative agreements and redirected support toward diamond models, authors now face a genuinely different set of funder incentives when choosing a route.
Diamond open access is a scholarly publishing model in which a journal or platform makes the version of record freely available to readers immediately on publication, without charging authors any fee, because publication costs are covered by non-commercial funders, universities, or community consortia rather than by the researcher.
- What is the difference between diamond and gold open access?
- What did cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy actually change?
- Which route should authors choose now?
- What are the practical requirements and deadlines?
- Common author questions, answered
What is the difference between diamond and gold open access?
Gold open access “embraces both journals supported by APCs or by other means of funding,” according to the definition used across the scholarly-communications literature — it is defined by immediate, free-to-read publication, not by any single funding mechanism. In practice, most gold OA venues from commercial and society publishers do charge an APC, often running into thousands of pounds per article.
Diamond open access is narrower and stricter: no author fee, no reader fee, ever. The 2021 Open Access Diamond Journals Study, commissioned by cOAlition S and Science Europe, found that diamond journals make up roughly 73% of all open access journals registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), yet account for only 8–9% of total OA articles published each year — most are small, discipline- or region-specific titles, with 54.4% publishing 25 or fewer articles annually.
| Feature | Diamond open access | Gold open access |
|---|---|---|
| Author fee (APC) | None | Usually charged (commercial/hybrid publishers) |
| Reader fee | None | None (once published) |
| Typical funder | Institutions, learned societies, government, consortia | Author/institution APC, Read & Publish deals |
| Ownership model | Community-led, non-profit | Often publisher-owned, for-profit |
| Median cost per article (2021 study) | ~$200 (in-kind + volunteer labour) | Frequently £1,500–£3,000+ APC |
| Regional strength | Latin America (~95% of OA journals are diamond) | Europe, North America (APC-funded) |
What did cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy actually change?
cOAlition S launched Plan S in 2018 with an ambitious 2021 compliance deadline for full, immediate open access. From 31 December 2024, cOAlition S stopped financially supporting transformative agreements and transformative journals — the “Read & Publish” deals that funders had previously used to help subscription publishers transition to gold OA. That withdrawal is the single biggest practical change for authors: funder money that once flowed toward APC-based Read & Publish deals is being redirected instead.
The coalition’s 2026-2030 strategy, run in two phases (2026-2027, then 2028-2030), commits to “enhancing the focus on sustainable and equitable models, such as PRC, diamond open access and preprints” and explicitly names the dominance of APCs, book processing charges, and Read & Publish agreements as having “contributed to a growth in open access publishing but also led to increasing costs” — costs the coalition says fall hardest on researchers at less-resourced institutions.
Coalition-wide infrastructure has followed the policy shift. The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) launched on 15 January 2025 in Madrid, offering diamond publishers a shared registry, guidelines, training platform, and publishing tools. This builds on the Horizon Europe-funded DIAMAS project (2022–2025) and the March 2022 Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, co-authored by cOAlition S, Science Europe, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR).
None of this abolishes gold OA. Independent tracking cited alongside the new strategy shows gold open access articles grew from 14% of publications in 2014 to 40% in 2024, while subscription-only access fell from 70% to 54% over the same decade — gold remains the largest single OA route by volume. What has changed is funder appetite for underwriting its APC costs through transformative deals.
Which route should authors choose now?
For most authors, the decision now turns on three questions: does a credible diamond venue exist in your field, does your funder mandate immediate OA with a specific route, and can you or your institution absorb an APC if gold is the only realistic option.
- Funder mandate first. Check whether your funder is a cOAlition S signatory (e.g. UKRI, several Horizon Europe funders) and whether its post-2024 policy still counts a Read & Publish deal as compliant, or whether it now favours diamond/PRC routes and rights retention instead.
- Field coverage. Diamond OA is strongest in humanities, social sciences, and Latin American-led research; it is thinner in high-volume STEM fields still dominated by commercial gold and hybrid titles.
- Cost exposure. If no diamond venue fits, gold OA via an institutional Read & Publish deal (where one still exists) or the Rights Retention Strategy — depositing the author accepted manuscript under a CC BY licence regardless of the publisher’s OA status — remains a compliant fallback.
- Journal vetting. Confirm DOAJ listing and peer-review standards before submitting to any unfamiliar diamond title; volume and prestige metrics vary far more widely across diamond journals than across established gold titles.
Institutions and research administrators should treat this as a policy-tracking task, not a one-off decision: funder OA policies, APC caps, and diamond eligibility lists are being updated through the 2026-2027 phase of the cOAlition S strategy, and guidance that was compliant in 2024 may no longer be by the time a manuscript is accepted.
What are the practical requirements and deadlines?
The clearest hard deadline already passed: 31 December 2024 was the cut-off after which cOAlition S funders stopped paying into transformative agreements and transformative journal arrangements. Any Read & Publish deal negotiated after that date does not carry cOAlition S financial backing, though individual funders retain discretion over their own compliance rules.
There is no equivalent single deadline forcing authors into diamond OA — the 2026-2030 strategy is a funding-and-infrastructure redirection, not a new mandate with a compliance date. Authors should check their funder’s current policy page rather than assume coalition-wide rules apply uniformly, since cOAlition S members retain latitude in implementation.
Common author questions, answered
What is the difference between gold and diamond open access?
Gold open access makes the published article free to read immediately, usually funded by an author-facing APC. Diamond open access also gives immediate free reading but charges neither author nor reader, with costs instead covered by institutions, societies, or public funders.
What does diamond open access mean?
Diamond open access means a journal or platform publishes research with no fee to the author and no fee to the reader. It is typically community-led and non-profit, run by academic societies, universities, or consortia rather than commercial publishers, and is sometimes called “platinum” open access.
What is golden open access?
“Golden” open access is simply another name for gold open access — the model where the final, published version of an article is made freely readable on the publisher’s own platform immediately, most commonly funded through an article processing charge paid by the author or their institution.
What is the difference between open access and gold open access?
“Open access” is the umbrella term covering any route to free-to-read research, including green (repository self-archiving), gold, diamond, and hybrid models. Gold open access is one specific route within that umbrella: publication directly on the journal’s own platform, typically APC-funded.
What this means for research administrators and institutions
Institutional OA teams should expect three practical consequences: fewer new Read & Publish deals carrying funder co-financing, more DOAJ-listed diamond venues to vet for approved-journal lists, and a continued need to track funder-by-funder policy pages rather than treat cOAlition S guidance as one uniform rulebook.
The direction of travel is clear even without a single deadline: cOAlition S investment is moving toward diamond and away from APC-financed transformative deals, while gold OA keeps growing in absolute volume via direct APC payment and Rights Retention. Authors who map their funder’s current policy — not the 2018 Plan S baseline — against real venue options in their field make the more durable choice.
Research administration teams coordinating institutional OA compliance can find related definitions and workflow context in CASRAI’s research administration resources and the CASRAI Dictionary.
