How Journal Editors are Addressing Challenges with No-Fee Open Access

Presentation Type

Presentation

Start Date

9-4-2026 1:45 PM

End Date

9-4-2026 2:15 PM

Description

No-fee or “diamond” open access embodies the principles of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, particularly openness, inclusivity, and collaboration. This model of publishing strengthens equitable access to knowledge, promotes multilingualism, and democratizes science.

Unique among open access models, no-fee open access eliminates both APCs and subscription fees, making it completely free for both authors and readers. This model is often funded by academic institutions, governments, or non-profit organizations, focusing on equity, inclusivity, and accessibility.

To investigate the efficacy of this model, the presenters administered a survey of North American no-fee journal editors to explore the challenges of managing no-fee OA journals and how those challenges are being addressed. This session will share an overview of the survey data, including the challenges facing no-fee journals, the strategies journal editors are using to overcome those challenges, and the issues around equity and the sustainability of this publishing model. We will share anonymized comments from the survey respondents to provide more insight into the spectrum of their perspectives in running no-fee OA journals.

Author Bios

Colleen Lyon is Engineering Librarian at Michigan State University. She was formerly the Head of Scholarly Communications at the University of Texas at Austin where she supported several OA journals. She is interested in OA publishing and how liaison librarians can support authors in their disciplines who want to make their work more openly available.

Christopher Hollister is Head of Scholarly Communication with the University at Buffalo Libraries. He is co-founder and former co-editor of the open access journal, Communications in Information Literacy, and he is author of the Handbook of Academic Writing for Librarians (2014, ACRL). In addition, Chris teaches several courses for the University’s Department of Information Science.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Apr 9th, 1:45 PM Apr 9th, 2:15 PM

How Journal Editors are Addressing Challenges with No-Fee Open Access

No-fee or “diamond” open access embodies the principles of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, particularly openness, inclusivity, and collaboration. This model of publishing strengthens equitable access to knowledge, promotes multilingualism, and democratizes science.

Unique among open access models, no-fee open access eliminates both APCs and subscription fees, making it completely free for both authors and readers. This model is often funded by academic institutions, governments, or non-profit organizations, focusing on equity, inclusivity, and accessibility.

To investigate the efficacy of this model, the presenters administered a survey of North American no-fee journal editors to explore the challenges of managing no-fee OA journals and how those challenges are being addressed. This session will share an overview of the survey data, including the challenges facing no-fee journals, the strategies journal editors are using to overcome those challenges, and the issues around equity and the sustainability of this publishing model. We will share anonymized comments from the survey respondents to provide more insight into the spectrum of their perspectives in running no-fee OA journals.