Public launch of the European Diamond Capacity Hub and the ALMASI Project, 15 January 2025

Date: 14 January, 14:00 CET to 15 January, 18:00 CET

Location: MUNCYT (Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología), Calle Pintor Murillo, 15 – Alcobendas – MADRID

The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) will hold its public launch on the 15 January 2025 in Madrid, Spain. The event will be hosted by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), and it will take place at the Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (MUNCYT). At the event, key features of the EDCH will be presented, along with a range of opportunities for active participation and collaboration.

The EDCH aims to strengthen the Diamond OA community in Europe by supporting European institutional, national and disciplinary capacity centres and Diamond publishers and service providers in their mission of Diamond OA scholarly publishing. The EDCH will provide these Diamond stakeholders with coordination, sustainability, training modules, technical tools, and services at scale. The EDCH thus answers the need for capacity building in the Diamond OA community that was expressed in the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access.

The EDCH takes its place alongside other regional Diamond OA capacity hubs worldwide, like Redalyc–Amelica or AJOL, and hopes to inspire other regions to support the idea of a global framework for  Diamond OA that UNESCO is currently exploring through a consultation process. 

There has been a marked increase in political support for Diamond Open Access. The Council of the European Union Conclusions of May 2023 reflect a consensus between EU Member States to move towards ‘high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing’, while the Council Conclusions of June 2022 connected open science with research assessment reform. The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science of November 2021 reflects a similar consensus at the global level.

The initial components of the EDCH were developed within the frameworks of the EC-funded CRAFT-OA and the DIAMAS projects. The EDCH has received initial financial support from the French National Research Agency (ANR) and the CNRS.

By hosting the EDCH, OPERAS continues its mission to promote open scholarly communication and equitable publishing models across the European Research Area, advancing efforts to make Open Science a reality.

The EDCH will be launched in conjunction with a public event on 14 January 2025 announcing the EU-funded ALMASI project. This three-year project with 15 partners from three continents will seek a better understanding of the situation of non-profit OA publishing in three world regions – Africa, Latin America, and Europe – co-designing and aligning measures for quality alignment, training materials, and institutional and national policy development.

More information on registration and programme to come.