YERUN Event contributed to raising awareness on Diamond Open Access

On 20 June, YERUN held an online event on “Diamond Open Access: How can we make it shine?”

The event was a very positive experience, reaching the goal of stimulating a discussion among YERUN members and the wider research community on this established yet underexploited Open Access publication format. About 60 participants joined us online.

The first part of the event consisted in a series of pitches from six YERUN members. Below is a list of these pitches, with a short description from the presenters on their initiatives.  

• Hannah Crago and Dafni Kalatzi Pantera, from the University of Essex, presented ‘The Essex Student Journal: engaging students in diamond open access‘. The Essex Student Journal is a multi-disciplinary diamond open access journal run by students, for students. It helps to promote the benefits of diamond open access, and introduces our undergraduate and postgraduate students to diamond open access at an early stage of their careers. In this sense, the Essex Student Journal works as an engagement tool, whilst also providing our students with a range of benefits for themselves. To access the PPT, click here.

• Matthias Landwehr and Andreas Kirchner, from the University of Konstanz, presented the ‘KOALA’ project (Establishing Consortial Open Access Solutions). In the KOALA (Konsortiale Open Access Lösungen aufbauen) project, consortial solutions for financing open access are being established. Collaborative funding of open access journals and book series by academic libraries is an alternative to the dominant APC model, where articles are paid for individually by authors or their institutions. The infrastructure created by KOALA enables fair and sustainable financing of quality-assured open access publications. It contributes to removing financial hurdles for authors and thus facilitates participation in open access publications. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), partners are the TIB (Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology) and the University of Konstanz. To access the PPT, click here.

• Ivana Dorotić Malič, from the University of Rijeka, presented ‘Diamond open access at the University of Rijeka: Hrčak – portal of Croatian scientific and professional journals‘. HRČAK is the central portal of Croatian scientific, professional and popular open access (OA) journals. Hrčak offers open access to more than 500 journals, 300 of which are scientific peer reviewed publications, mostly in Croatian. Most of the journals do not ask authors to pay article processing charges (APCs). The University of Rijeka publishes 17 DOA journals on the Hrčak portal. To access the PPT, click here.

• Ron Aardening, from Maastricht University, presented ‘Diamond Open Access: initiatives to include DOA in the national Open Science agenda‘. Our collaborative strategies for the upcoming years: 1. Selected existing publishing initiatives based on central selection criteria, in line with consortium R&P deals (DOA or switching to DOA (e.g. Subscribe to Open) publishers); 2.       Fund for new DOA initiatives (e.g. university presses and national initiatives); 3. DOA infrastructures (e.g. openjournals.nl journal publishing platform). To access the PPT, click here.

• Cátia Teles e Marques and Salima Rehemtula, from NOVA University of Lisbon, presented the work of the NOVA Faculties of Sciences and Technology (NOVA FCT) and of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH) which have been promoting DOA through the dissemination of good practices and community advocacy, capacity building and training initiatives. The presentation highlighted some of the actions aimed at their in-house publications and researchers and designed to make diamond open access shine at NOVA. To access the PPT, click here.

• Tomi Rosti, from the University of Eastern Finland, presented ‘Diamond Open Access at UEF’. Here, students send their master thesis to the departments for the review in the service portal, and after approval, the theses are transferred to the university’s own Dspace-based publishing system for publication. We have also created our own processes for dissertations and self-archived articles. All publications are openly available and the university will take care or the costs.

Following these presentations, participants were split in breakout rooms, to discuss obstacles and possible solutions to a successful implementation of Diamond Open