This Monday we honor one of the earliest open access peer reviewed journals First Monday which recently announced that the first Monday of May 2026, the 30th anniversary of the journal, would be the last First Monday.
First Monday was openly accessible well before formal definitions of open access appeared. All of First Monday’s current and archival content is available freely to anyone with Internet connectivity. Authors retain the rights to their work published in First Monday and may freely make their papers available as they see fit.
First Monday has never charged — in its entire history — article processing charges (APC). First Monday has never subscribed to the notion that the article processing charges (APC) model is a version of open access publishing. First Monday has never leveled subscription fees or charges in its long history. First Monday has never tolerated advertisements in any form on its virtual pages. First Monday is truly openly accessible at all levels and has always been so, from its beginning with its first issue released on 6 May 1996.
For this monday-connect share a memorable article from First Monday. If you have not one that comes to mind, take a scan of the 364 past issues in the archive, all which have been published on the first Monday of every month going back to May 1996, almost 2500 articles in total.
Or enter a topic in the search - I was recently reflecting on digital storytelling and came up with 14 results on storytelling and spotted one I vaguely remembered reading long ago, from 2004:
Huffaker, D. (2004). Spinning yarns around the digital fire: Storytelling and dialogue among youth on the Internet. First Monday , 9 (1). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v9i1.1110
What First Monday articles can you surface for this Monday Connect of 2026? That these are all openly accessible after 30 years says much about open access publishing. I am not seeing anything about it disappearing, just no more new issues after May this year.