Free-to-publish open access journals by subject
The DOAJ lists 14,389 journals that charge no APC and no other author fees. 4,282 of them are also indexed in Scopus and therefore carry a SCImago ranking. Pick a subject area to see how many exist in your field, which are Q1 or Q2, and who publishes them. Data snapshot: August 2026.
| Subject area | No-APC journals | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 + Q4 | Share Q1/Q2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social Sciences | 1,864 | 384 | 541 | 933 | 50% |
| Arts and Humanities | 1,207 | 286 | 380 | 539 | 55% |
| Medicine | 736 | 68 | 108 | 557 | 24% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 316 | 32 | 56 | 225 | 28% |
| Engineering | 315 | 70 | 68 | 175 | 44% |
| Computer Science | 228 | 56 | 49 | 119 | 46% |
| Environmental Science | 225 | 27 | 45 | 150 | 32% |
| Mathematics | 207 | 45 | 39 | 121 | 41% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 194 | 28 | 53 | 112 | 42% |
| Earth and Planetary Sciences | 187 | 32 | 27 | 125 | 32% |
| Economics, Econometrics and Finance | 170 | 22 | 49 | 97 | 42% |
| Psychology | 158 | 27 | 36 | 94 | 40% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 120 | 22 | 19 | 79 | 34% |
| Health Professions | 100 | 12 | 18 | 69 | 30% |
| Materials Science | 97 | 20 | 25 | 51 | 46% |
| Physics and Astronomy | 96 | 19 | 17 | 57 | 38% |
| Energy | 84 | 27 | 20 | 35 | 56% |
| Chemistry | 80 | 14 | 11 | 53 | 31% |
| Decision Sciences | 67 | 11 | 17 | 39 | 42% |
| Nursing | 64 | 9 | 10 | 44 | 30% |
| Chemical Engineering | 52 | 12 | 12 | 27 | 46% |
| Immunology and Microbiology | 49 | 6 | 7 | 35 | 27% |
| Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics | 47 | 10 | 13 | 24 | 49% |
| Dentistry | 43 | 5 | 14 | 24 | 44% |
| Multidisciplinary | 43 | 6 | 8 | 28 | 33% |
| Veterinary | 42 | 5 | 5 | 32 | 24% |
| Neuroscience | 37 | 5 | 9 | 23 | 38% |
A journal can belong to more than one area, so the column does not sum to the total. Q counts use the journal's best quartile across its categories. Journals without a Scopus listing are not counted on these pages but are searchable in the finder.
What "Diamond open access" means
Diamond (or Platinum) open access journals are free for readers and free for authors: no article processing charge, no submission fee, no page charges. They are typically funded by universities, research institutes, learned societies or public programmes. Publishing in them costs nothing and keeps your work openly available, which is why funders increasingly recommend them. The quality signal to look at is the same as for any journal: peer review process, indexing (Scopus, Web of Science) and the SCImago quartile, all of which the finder shows for every title.