6.6 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond open access | 4/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_open_access | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:14:37.993676+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Disciplines === While diamond OA journals are available for most disciplines, they are more prevalent in the humanities and social science. The OA Diamond Study finds that, among the journals registered on the DOAJ, humanities and social science publications make up 60% of diamond open access journals and only 23.9% of APC-based journals. This distribution may be due to the differentiated evolution of scientific publishing during the 20th century, as "small HSS journals are often owned by universities and societies who often prefer OA diamond models, while many big science and medicine journals are owned by commercial publishers, more inclined to use APC models." However, the diamond model is still present in many disciplines, with 22.2% of diamond journals in STEM and 17.1% in Medicine. Medical diamond journals are often embedded in local communities, especially in non-western countries: "It becomes apparent that local diamond OA journals are not only important in HSS, but also in medicine." An additional survey led by the OA Diamond Survey of 1,619 diamond OA journals highlights a more complex disciplinary distribution: although the social sciences (27.2%) and humanities (19.2%) are well represented, more than a quarter of respondents did not favor one discipline in particular (15.1% for multidisciplinary and 12% for "other").
== Organization and economics == The OA Diamond Study introduced a taxonomy of 6 types of diamond OA journals based largely on their ownership status: institutional journals, learned-society journals, volunteer-run journals, publisher journals, platform journals, and large journals. Most diamond open access journals are managed by academic institutions, communities or platforms: "The majority of journals (42%) are owned by universities. The main alternatives are learned societies (14%) and, to a lesser extent, government agencies, university presses and individuals." This integration ensures the autonomy of the journals: they "are inherently independent from commercial publishers as they are not created by them and do not rely on them at the management level." The main sources of support for diamond OA journals are non-monetary: in-kind support from research institutions (such as hosting and software maintenance or copy-editing services) and voluntary contributions. Grant funding is significantly less-mentioned in surveys, possibly because it does not always ensure a regular source of support. Since the 1990s, shared platforms have become important intermediary actors for diamond journals, especially in Latin America (Redalyc, AmeliCA, ScIELO, Ariadna Ediciones) and some European countries such as France (OpenEdition Journals, via Lodel), or the Netherlands, Finland, Croatia, and Denmark (all via PKP's Open Journal System). Since the core definition of the diamond model is focused on the lack of APCs, a few diamond journals (less than 5–10% of respondents in the OA Diamond Survey) maintain commercial activities by charging for services or additional features (freemium).
Operating costs of diamond journals are low: half of the 1,600 journals surveyed by the OA Diamond Study had costs below $/€1,000 per year. The median cost per articles is around $200, which is significantly lower than standard APCs for commercial open access journals. These low costs are accounted for by institutional support, limited expenses, and reliance on volunteer work: 60% of the journals surveyed in the OA Diamond Study were at least partly run by volunteers. The governance models of diamond journals also have an impact on their economic models. Journals embedded in academic institutions are more like to benefit from direct funding or support, whereas "journals owned by learned societies rely significantly more on membership fees". Despite these supports, a significant number of diamond journals still lack funding for their basic operations. Finally, unlike APC-funded journals, research funding organizations tend not to support diamond OA journals, though there are proposals for new direct funding mechanisms.
== Issues and perspectives ==
=== Apparent limitations of focus === Recent discussions of diamond open access have taken an increasingly narrow focus, limiting the definition to mostly refer to journals, instead of the full range of academic texts. Others argue that diamond open access should be a format-agnostic concept that can include all research outputs, including long form works like book chapters and monographs, which play an important role in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
=== Preservation === Long-term preservation is essential for all scholarly publications, and this is being studied for diamond open access journals. Results from a survey presented in the OA Diamond Journals Study indicate that 57% of diamond OA journals have no preservation policy. While libraries have an incentive to preserve articles published by subscription-based journals to ensure their investment is not lost, there is no similar motivation for free online content. Efforts are underway to solve this issue, such as Project JASPER, an ongoing project of the Directory of Open Access Journals, CLOCKSS, the Internet Archive, the KEEPERS Registry, and PKP-PN; as well as the automated preservation of published articles in LOCKSS when Open Journal Systems (OJS) is used. Of the diamond journals surveyed in the OA Diamond Journals Study, 60 use this open source software application for managing and publishing.
=== Recognition === While diamond open access journals make up a large share of all open access publications, they have long been overlooked by scientific funding mechanisms:
This reality is however not enough acknowledged and taken into account in the open access journal debate. There is a danger that Diamond open access publishers' interests are overlooked and that a corporate model of OA will shape the future of academia. We therefore argue for a shift in the debate and that policy makers should take the Diamond Model serious by providing support for it. The launch of the cOAlition-S initiative in 2018 made the recognition of diamond journals more pressing. Support for open access publishing would now be conditioned on adherence to a series of editorial and economic standards which some diamond journals may struggle to conform to, given their limited means. One of the final recommendations of the OA Diamond Study was a call to fully integrate Diamond journals into the Plan S strategy: