Diamond Open Access?

Plan S seemed promising when it was launched 5 years ago. Early in 2022 cOAlition S, Science Europe and others jointly published an Action Plan for Diamond Open Access. A year later Johan Rooryck, Editor in Chief, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, proposed “Principles of Diamond Open Access Publishing.”

The principles were meant to move perception of Diamond Open Access away from just a new business model for OA publishing. They are:

Principle 1: Publishing is part and parcel of research and scholarship

Principle 2: Ownership and governance

Principle 3. Equitable by nature and design

Principle 4: A federated and global network of communities

Principle 5: Service provision

Principle 6: Transparent and aligned quality standards

Principle 7: Openness and innovation

Principle 8: Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Principle 9: User rights and privacy

Principle 10: Sustainability

Building on this idea is a group funded by the EU called Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication or DIAMAS for short. A DIAMAS report delivered a few months ago, IPSP Best Practices Quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems for Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) includes an extensive self-assessment checklist for IPSPs based on the best practices delineated by the report.

This all may seem very Euro-centric and oriented to scientific literature but is really a part of a much larger movement for advancing Diamond OA worldwide for all disciplines. So, we look forward to the results of the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access happening in Mexico later this year.

One reason this caught my attention is that last year Falvey library at Villanova University launched the first academic OA journal in the Igbo language of Nigeria. More details on this are in the blog post written by a colleague: “Welcoming a New Academic Journal: Ugegbe.”