Reflections on the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access
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From October 23 to 27, 2023, several members of Coalition Publica joined hundreds of delegates from around the world in Toluca, Mexico for the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access. Planned to coincide with the annual Open Access Week and held at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Redalyc, the summit included several events, including the 2nd Diamond Open Access Conference, which brought together international players dedicated to the principles of Diamond Open Access. The event’s conclusions are available here.
Diamond Open Access At-A-Glance
Diamond Open Access (OA) refers to a model of open access in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to read (subscriptions) or to publish (Article Processing Charges or APCs). Diamond OA publications and platforms are community-driven and academy-led, enabling bibliodiversity through their representation of multilingual and multicultural scholarly communities.
Diamond OA has come to the forefront of conversations regarding equity and sustainability in OA publishing in the past few years, with the publication of the OA Diamond Journals Study (2021) and The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access (2022), which together revealed the scale of Diamond OA publishing globally and started to describe the supports Diamond OA publications require. These developments were further consolidated at the first Diamond Open Access Conference held in Croatia in the fall of 2022.
There is a growing international movement to advocate for Diamond OA as a sustainable path to open access that is inherently equitable and supports bibliodiversity.
Global Summit on Diamond Open Access
A Canadian delegation took part in the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access in Toluca, including representatives from Érudit, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), and the Fonds de recherche du Québec. Université de Montréal Professor Jean-Claude Guédon gave the opening keynote on the theme of “Science as a Common Good.” Tanja Niemann, Executive Director of Érudit addressed the delegates regarding the value of national infrastructure projects such as the erudit.org platform, and she along with Juan Pablo Alperin, co-Scientific Director of PKP, shared some thoughts on the opportunities and challenges of establishing a global federation for Diamond OA, a major subject of discussion at the summit.
Both in the conference hall and in informal conversations, Canada was often mentioned for its strong support of research, scholarly publishing, open access, and related infrastructure. Érudit and PKP, who are partners in the Canadian infrastructure project Coalition Publica, were acknowledged as playing important roles in convening conversations around open access and open science, both at home and abroad. A poster presented at the summit highlighted Canada’s strong library publishing community and its role in supporting Diamond OA.
The summit highlighted several key take-aways which Canadian stakeholders advocating for a fair and equitable approaches to open access that is inline with global approaches can consider:
The principles of Diamond OA are supported internationally: The international commitment to the principles of Diamond OA is very high, with actors from every populated continent, as well as important international groups, such as UNESCO, adding their voices to Diamond OA advocacy efforts.
International collaboration is essential in the implementation of Diamond OA: The remarkable diversity of contexts, approaches to, and funding mechanisms for free-to-publish/free-to-reach OA around the world offer a rich opportunity to share knowledge and experience across borders, for the mutual benefit of both the global community and individual nations.
Sustainable funding of Diamond OA publications and infrastructures is essential: There is a shared concern that community-driven and institutionally-supported OA publications and the infrastructures which enable them are not reliably and sustainably resourced, and that it is of the utmost importance to ensure their ongoing independence in the face of pressures to commercialize.
Canadian Context
Within this international context of high engagement, breadth of knowledge, and shared concern for Diamond OA, Canada is acknowledged as leaders in Diamond OA. This makes Canada extremely well positioned to act in collaboration with the international community to further Canadian scholarship and to cement our leadership role in support of Diamond OA:
The recent announcement of the review of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications is an excellent opportunity for Canada to adapt its policy landscape to support Diamond OA and consider appropriate funding mechanisms, such as enhancing existing journal support programs.
Diamond OA also aligns well with the growing momentum to build collective strategies that support Canadian publications, not-for-profit publishers, and open research infrastructure, as articulated by Canadian Association of Research Libraries and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) in their joint action plan Towards Open Scholarship.
Canada’s university library community can build on its strategic commitments to open access through further investment in initiatives that directly support Diamond OA publications, including Érudit and CRKN’s Partnership for Open Acces as well as their home-grown library publishing programs.
Following this remarkable week of presentations, networking, and lively discussions, your Canadian representatives came away motivated and energized to work both locally and globally to advance Diamond Open Access. We look forward to sharing more of our reflections and plans with you in the coming months.
About Coalition Publica
Coalition Publica is a partnership created by Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project dedicated to the advancement of research dissemination and digital publishing in the social sciences and humanities in Canada, specifically designed to support the SSH community in the transition towards sustainable open access. Coalition Publica will pursue this goal through the development of a non-commercial, open source national infrastructure dedicated to digital scholarly publishing, dissemination, and research—combining PKP’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) software and Érudit’s digital dissemination platform (erudit.org). https://www.coalition-publi.ca/
About the Public Knowledge Project
The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a multi-university initiative that develops free and open software for journals, books, and preprints, to improve the quality and reach of scholarly publishing. PKP’s flagship software, Open Journal Systems (OJS), is a journal management and publishing system that assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions through to online publication and indexing. Over 350 Canadian journals and over 30,000 journals worldwide use OJS. https://pkp.sfu.ca/
About Érudit
Érudit is an inter-university consortium that provides research and cultural communities with a wide range of services in digital publishing and dissemination. The Érudit platform—erudit.org—is the leading digital dissemination platform of SSH research in Canada. It hosts over 300 journals and its collections are consulted by the research community and the general public, including the members of over 1,200 institutions worldwide. https://www.erudit.org/