The Seismica Initiative: towards a community-driven, Diamond Open Access journal for seismological research

Volcanica (www.jvolcanica.org) has been accepting submissions for two years now, and at this time of writing has published 37 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Being a fully Open Access journal, Volcanica does not generate revenue from reader/library subscriptions, nor does it charge article processing charges to the authors. This free-to-read, free-to-publish “business model” is called Diamond Open Access (DOA) publishing, and while it has gained some footing in the humanities and social sciences, DOA is still in its infancy for natural/physical sciences. Shortly after Nature published its controversial announcement for an OA publishing model, a Slack group was created to collect ideas from like-minded individuals to start our own Diamond Open Access journal for the seismological community: Seismica.