From green to gold to diamond: open access’s return to social justice

This paper will be presented at IFLA WLIC 2018 in August 2018. 

The open access movement is underpinned by a philanthropic purpose of sharing research output for the betterment of society. In rolling out this noble cause, social justice imperative located within the movement was destined to disrupt the current publishing model. From its fledgling stages ‘foundationalised’ by the green route via institutional repositories, the open access movement has grown to include the gold route and now it can boast the diamond route. The ‘library as a publisher’ service brings to the fore and consolidates the social justice imperative of open access. Researchers, in this growing service model, are supported by their desire to share their research output for the growth of research and to find solutions to the myriad of challenges that beset society. Diamond open access publishing, which is the focus of this paper, itself is slowly gaining traction making libraries distinctive drivers of open access. The University of Cape Town Libraries is an exemplar of an academic library that is offering a diamond open journal and monograph publishing service. The driver of the Libraries’ ‘library as a publisher’ service is the return to the social justice imperatives of open access. In rolling-out its ‘library as a publisher’ service, UCT Libraries provides a service that makes content easily accessible to African researchers, addressing African challenges. The service provided returns to the core principles of open access, that is, sharing content for the betterment of society.