Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DIAMAS (Developing Institutional open Access publishing Models to Advance Scholarly communication)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2023-08-31
In the transition towards Open Access (OA), institutional publishing is challenged by fragmentation and varying service quality, visibility, and sustainability. To address this issue, DIAMAS gathers 23 organisations from 12 European countries, well-versed in OA academic publishing and scholarly communication. The project will:
1. Map the current landscape of Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) in 25 countries of the ERA with special attention for IPSPs that do not charge fees for publishing or reading. This will yield a taxonomy of IPSPs and an IPSP landscape report, a basis for the rest of the project.
2. Coordinate and improve the efficiency and quality of IPSPs by developing a European Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP). This quality seal will professionalise, strengthen and reduce the fragmentation of institutional publishing in Europe. EQSIP will serve as a benchmark for a gap analysis of the data in (1).
Buy-in and capacity-building is ensured by co-creation with the relevant IPSP communities of practice, creating a Common Access Point for IPSPs, an IPSP registry with 80% of IPSPs in the ERA, publishing guidelines, training materials, self-assessment tools, financial models, and shared cost frameworks. DIAMAS embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion by addressing gender equity in OA publishing and multilingualism in 15 European languages. Special attention is paid to building and enabling the financial sustainability of IPSPs.
3. Formulate community-led, actionable recommendations and strategies for institutional leaders, funders/sponsors/donors, and policymakers in the European Research Area (ERA). Workshops and targeted networking actions will reach and engage institutional decision-makers.
In 36 months, DIAMAS will deliver an aligned, high-quality, and sustainable institutional OA scholarly publication ecosystem for the ERA, setting a new standard for OA publishing, shared and co-designed with all stakeholders.
1. Map the current landscape of Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) in 25 countries of the ERA with special attention for IPSPs that do not charge fees for publishing or reading. This will yield a taxonomy of IPSPs and an IPSP landscape report, a basis for the rest of the project.
2. Coordinate and improve the efficiency and quality of IPSPs by developing a European Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP). This quality seal will professionalise, strengthen and reduce the fragmentation of institutional publishing in Europe. EQSIP will serve as a benchmark for a gap analysis of the data in (1).
Buy-in and capacity-building is ensured by co-creation with the relevant IPSP communities of practice, creating a Common Access Point for IPSPs, an IPSP registry with 80% of IPSPs in the ERA, publishing guidelines, training materials, self-assessment tools, financial models, and shared cost frameworks. DIAMAS embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion by addressing gender equity in OA publishing and multilingualism in 15 European languages. Special attention is paid to building and enabling the financial sustainability of IPSPs.
3. Formulate community-led, actionable recommendations and strategies for institutional leaders, funders/sponsors/donors, and policymakers in the European Research Area (ERA). Workshops and targeted networking actions will reach and engage institutional decision-makers.
In 36 months, DIAMAS will deliver an aligned, high-quality, and sustainable institutional OA scholarly publication ecosystem for the ERA, setting a new standard for OA publishing, shared and co-designed with all stakeholders.
In its first year, the project mapped the Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) landscape in the European Research Area through an extensive survey. The survey received about 700 answers from 18 countries, resulting in a database of 650 IPSPs. The 95 questions asked in the survey cover many aspects of IPSP activities: what they deliver, how they operate, how they are governed, how they are sustained, and what their challenges and expectations are. The answers to the survey yielded a database of 650 IPSPs which can be exploited in the future to set up a pan-european community of IPSPs. An in-depth analysis of the data provided by the survey is currently being worked on.
During this period, a large corpus of 74 best publishing practice documents was collected, analyzed, compiled, and published in a report. This report served as a basis for the 1st version of an “Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing” (EQSIP 1.0) for IPSPs. It was discussed with focus groups from different European countries and disciplines and will be adapted accordingly. The 2nd version of the EQSIP (EQSIP 2.0) will be published soon.
During this period, a large corpus of 74 best publishing practice documents was collected, analyzed, compiled, and published in a report. This report served as a basis for the 1st version of an “Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing” (EQSIP 1.0) for IPSPs. It was discussed with focus groups from different European countries and disciplines and will be adapted accordingly. The 2nd version of the EQSIP (EQSIP 2.0) will be published soon.
The first results of the project will lead to the European institutional publishing community being progressively structured around common standards, best practices, and use of resources. These will generate better alignment, synergies and efficiency in the operations of institutional publishing and increase trust among policymakers and funders to support this model of academic publishing. The overall goal of the project is to create a high quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing alternative to the “Gold APC” commercial model and a landslide shift in the scholarly communication system. This strategy is supported by three concurrent EC-funded projects – Diamas, Craft-OA and Palomera – that work hand in hand to create efficient community-driven pathways to equitable institutional publishing.
More broadly, this effort undergirds the implementation of the “Diamond Action Plan” that was launched in February 2022 by Science Europe, cOAlition S, ANR and OPERAS, and that was endorsed by more than 150 institutions and other types of academic organisations, who now constitute a community that is kept informed of progress in the three projects and is reflecting on ways to support Diamond Open Access institutional publishing in the future.
These activities around the DIAMAS project take place in the context of an even wider effort to build a global federation of diamond OA publishing, a plan that will be presented and discussed during the Global Diamond Conference in Toluca, Mexico on 23-27 October 2023.
To increase the uptake of the first results of the project, there is a need for support and coordination by institutions, policymakers, and funding agencies across the ERA. A previous study identified the diamond OA journals landscape as a fragmented “archipelago” of relatively isolated communities. The Diamas survey, which was conducted at the level of service providers of these journals, confirmed this picture. To overcome the global fragmentation and lack of coordination among journals and service providers, there is a need for coordinated action at the institutional and policy-making levels. In other terms, the institutional Diamond OA publishing community needs a better aligned and more sustainable policy, investment and funding environment to be able to increase capacity and grow its potential to provide researchers with an equitable and sustainable scholarly publishing ecosystem.
More broadly, this effort undergirds the implementation of the “Diamond Action Plan” that was launched in February 2022 by Science Europe, cOAlition S, ANR and OPERAS, and that was endorsed by more than 150 institutions and other types of academic organisations, who now constitute a community that is kept informed of progress in the three projects and is reflecting on ways to support Diamond Open Access institutional publishing in the future.
These activities around the DIAMAS project take place in the context of an even wider effort to build a global federation of diamond OA publishing, a plan that will be presented and discussed during the Global Diamond Conference in Toluca, Mexico on 23-27 October 2023.
To increase the uptake of the first results of the project, there is a need for support and coordination by institutions, policymakers, and funding agencies across the ERA. A previous study identified the diamond OA journals landscape as a fragmented “archipelago” of relatively isolated communities. The Diamas survey, which was conducted at the level of service providers of these journals, confirmed this picture. To overcome the global fragmentation and lack of coordination among journals and service providers, there is a need for coordinated action at the institutional and policy-making levels. In other terms, the institutional Diamond OA publishing community needs a better aligned and more sustainable policy, investment and funding environment to be able to increase capacity and grow its potential to provide researchers with an equitable and sustainable scholarly publishing ecosystem.