The facets of Diamond OA across Europe
The richness of Diamond Open Access (OA) publishing is characterised by its diversity: from the wide-ranging disciplines it serves in multiple languages to the types of organisations and networks involved in developing, running or maintaining it. The context of a country’s publishing industry and national political, social, and economic OA priorities, policies, and practices underpins the local, regional and national interests that drive Diamond OA.
Understanding the state of Diamond OA publishing across the European Research Area is a key goal in the DIAMAS project. One outcome of this research identifies how Diamond OA publishing and institutional service providers are financially sustained in diverse national contexts.
The current contexts for Diamond OA publishing in 10 countries feature in the newly-published National overviews on sustaining institutional publishing in Europe, a report from the work package that SPARC Europe leads. The countries are Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, and the U.K.
This report is essential reading to understand the path forward for Diamond publishing. Some key findings include:
- National contexts differ and create unique conditions for Diamond OA publishing in each country.
- Diamond OA particularly flourishes in countries with strong community leadership and public funding.
- In countries where institutional publishers are coordinated at the national level, more public funding may be available for Diamond OA, although this is not necessarily a condition for robust national infrastructures to support Diamond publishing.
Read the National overviews on sustaining institutional publishing in Europe here.