Action Plan for Diamond Open Access is released

The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access has just been released, jointly by Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and the French National Research Agency (ANR). The term Diamond refers to a model of Open Access (OA) scholarly publishing in which journals and platforms are free for authors and readers. The Action Plan is dedicated to further developing and expanding a sustainable, community-driven Diamond OA ecosystem.

The Action Plan proposes to align and develop common resources for the entire Diamond ecosystem, including journals and platforms, while respecting its cultural, multilingual and disciplinary diversity, which is the strength of the sector. The Plan focuses on four core elements: efficiency, quality standards, capacity building, and sustainability, following the recommendations of the OA Diamond Journals Study. The study, published in March 2021 and produced by 10 institutions, led by cOAlition S, counts to this date over 21,000 views and 12,000 downloads on the Zenodo platform. Also in 2021, the University of Coimbra hosted a workshop to present and discuss the main results of the study.

At the time of its launch, a wide and diverse group of over 40 international organisations have already expressed their support for the Action Plan. The University of Coimbra is part of this group of first endorsing institutions, besides being a member of the Executive Assembly of the OPERAS infrastructure, one of the organisations in charge of the Plan.

Marc Schiltz, President of Science Europe, states that “endorsing the Diamond Action Plan is a sign of commitment to work together towards a scholarly publishing model that is equitable, community-driven, and academic-led and -owned. The Action Plan provides a set of priority actions to further develop and expand a sustainable, community-driven Diamond scholarly communication ecosystem.”

The Action Plan aims to create an inclusive community worldwide that has the tools to strengthen existing Diamond OA journals and platforms and increase their visibility. The document was prepared by ANR, cOAlition S, OPERAS infrastructure and Science Europe in consultation with participants of the Diamond Open Access Workshop held in February 2022 and experts from Science Europe's Open Science working group. A summary of the plan was presented in Paris at the Open Science European Conference 2022, during a session on the future of scholarly publishing.

Support

A full overview of supporting organisations can be found here. Organisations and individuals who also wish to support the development of the Diamond Open Access ecosystem and become part of its community can subscribe to the Action Plan at this link.

Access the Plan

Read and download the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access on the Zenodo platform.