THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE DIAMOND PUBLICATION IN COLOMBIA: MAKING VISIBLE THE INVISIBLE

In this context, the rigorous and detailed work of CoLav had the aim to “calculate the APC costs assumed by Colombian universities, identify the type of access to publications made in the last 10 years (2009-2019), and other derived analyses” (CoLav, 2020: 8). Among its findings it highlights:

Between 2009 and 2019, Colombian institutions have published 124,794 works, taking nine information cores as reference1. The documents from which the author of correspondence could be identified, specially from a Colombian institution and participant of the Colombian Consortium, represent 27% (33,682). 

The documents come from 60 Colombian institutions and have been published in journals from 2,783 publishers. 28.5% of Colombia’s scientific production has been published in 3 publishers: Elsevier, Springer and U.  Nacional de Colombia.

The main language of publication is English (69.07% of the documents), followed by Spanish (26.18%). Only 3.64% of the documents respond to a multilingual scheme (English and Spanish).

39% of Colombia’s scientific production is under a paywall.

Between 2009 and 2019, Colombia has paid USD 10,900,808 in APC and this represents an expenditure that has multiplied by 15 in 2019 with respect to 2009. In turn, the cost per publication, from the Colombian experience, has become more expensive: it has gone from USD 1,060 to USD 1,493 on average (CoLaV, 2020).