ARC Alliance: Supporting Diamond OA

Abstract:  Open access publishing is increasing, especially with support from recently adopted government policies worldwide. However, this transition has also resulted in a new set of challenges, including the domination of gold open-access with expensive article processing charges. We are at a critical inflection point where the academic research community can be leaders in the sustainability of our information ecosystem and invest in a strong alliance that prioritizes making information openly available. Miller and Rice (2023) recently provided a detailed analysis of the crisis in scholarly publishing and advanced an Academic Research Community (ARC) Alliance publishing model to respond to this crisis. The ARC Alliance (https://arc-alliance.unc.edu/) is a community of like-minded scholars advocating for a diamond open-access publishing model in which scholars retain copyright to their own work and profit is removed from the model in place of an altruistic, high-quality publishing platform intended to return leadership in publishing to the ARC. The ARC Alliance is building international awareness of the issues through a broad-based representation of a diverse group of leaders in open access publishing, leading scholars experienced with editing large, high-quality journals, and academic administrators who must ultimately be convinced that change of the status quo is both necessary and can be accomplished without sacrificing publication quality that is important for scientific evaluation, promotion, and tenure. Our belief is that a broad, diverse engagement of scholars, administrators, and the library community is essential to make meaningful headway on the profound challenges facing scholarly publishing. We seek to collaborate and partner with similar efforts worldwide. We detail the principles, accomplishments, and priorities of the ARC Alliance as we endeavor to catalyze sustainable diamond open-access publishing for the betterment of humankind.