The OA Diamond Journals Study

"We are delighted to present the results of the study commissioned last year by cOAlition S, with financial support from Science Europe, to provide an analysis and overview of collaborative, community-driven open access journals and platforms (aka “OA diamond”). The main objectives of the study were to provide an analysis of the global landscape of OA diamond journals and platforms, identify their current funding models and their technical and organisational challenges, and examine the potential for collaboration and shared services. In addition, we asked for an action plan and recommendations to bolster and co-finance this crucial part of the academic publishing landscape. The study presented today reveals a vast archipelago of OA diamond journals that was previously obscured by discussions mainly focused on the transformation of commercial models for academic publishing. The rich landscape that heaves into view shows, for the first time, to what extent the diamond publishing model serves the academic community through its variety of scholarly disciplines, languages, and cultures. To a large extent, the study uncovers the full dimension of an important part of the world of scholarly dissemination that is as old as science itself: the scientific community assessing scientific quality and managing scholarly communication on its own. Moreover, the study shows that the collaborative, community-driven publishing model needs to be more efficiently organised, coordinated and funded to better support researchers in disseminating their work. These elements are essential for this type of publishing to be sustainable in the long term, and to reveal its full potential in the context of open science. We hope that the study will initiate a community-wide discussion leading to concrete steps for consolidating this vital infrastructure. We would like to thank the consortium of 10 organisations (OPERAS , Sparc Europe , Utrecht University , DOAJ , UiT The Arctic University of Norway , LIBER , OASPA , ENRESSH , Redalyc-AmeliCA , CSI ) that conducted this study, and particularly the authors of the reports."