With this inaugural editorial, we introduce Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), the new gold open access (OA) journal of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS). VCS is devoted to vegetation classification at any spatial and organisational scale and irrespective of the methodological approach. It welcomes equally case studies and broad-scale syntheses as well as conceptual and methodological papers. Two Permanent Collections deal with ecoinformatics (including the standardised Database Reports published in collaboration with GIVD, the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases) and phytosociological nomenclature (edited in collaboration with the respective IAVS Working Group). We discuss the advantages of OA as well as challenges and drawbacks caused by the way it is currently implemented, namely “pay for flaws” and publication impediments for scientists without access to funding. Being a society-owned journal, editorial decisions in VCS are free from economic considerations, while at the same time IAVS offers significant reductions to article processing charges (APCs) for authors with financial constraints. However, it is recognised that sustainable OA publishing will require that payment systems are changed from author-paid APCs to contracts between the science funding agencies and publishers or learned societies, to cover the production costs of journals that meet both quality and impact criteria. Abbreviations: APC = article processing charge, GIVD = Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases, IAVS = International Association for Vegetation Science, JVS = Journal of Vegetation Science, OA = open access, VCS = Vegetation Classification and Survey.