When Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation announced it was being wound down in 2025, the decision stunned many in the open science community. In an editorial letter published that April, the journal’s founding editor wrote, “Our 20th year will be our last … we cannot see any way that the journal can survive sustainably on the basis of gift labour.” The journal, which had recently embraced a diamond open access model with no fees for authors or readers found that removing subscription income left no stable revenue to sustain more than 2,000 hours of unpaid editorial work each year. The experience served as a stark warning: the scholarly community risks embracing a “utopian ideal” of free publishing without grappling with the structural realities that make it viable.

This tension, between ideal and infrastructure, between the dream of equity and the reality of uneven capacity, lies at the heart of the diamond open access (OA) conversation today. As the world celebrates Open Access Week later this month, it is worth asking: is “free” truly fair, and for whom?

Keywords

open access · open science · business model · publishing · sustainability