Diamond Open Access

Diamond Open Access refers to Open Access models that generally do not involve either reading costs or Open Access costs (“article processing charges” or “book processing charges”) for the publishers.

Business models can vary considerably. For example, some commercial publishers refer to their journals as diamond journals when the operating costs and their usual profit margin are borne by professional societies rather than the authors.

However, the ideal of Diamond Open Access would be if the operation is non-commercial, non-profit and non-profit orientated towards the interests of research and science. Existing scientific structures and open source software are often utilised, for example

• Preprint platforms such as arXiv, medRxiv or bioRxiv to operate so-called overlay journals that build on the infrastructure and content of the platforms
• Open Journal Systems (OJS) or Open Monograph Press (OMP) from the Public Knowledge Project (PKP): https://pkp.sfu.ca/software/
• OJS hosting services of selected “specialised information services for science” (in German Fachinformationsdienste or short FIDs), for example FID Linguistics, FID Classical Studies, FID Philosophy
• Kotahi or ketty from Coko: https://coko.foundation/
• Janeway: https://janeway.systems/
• Publisso: https://www.publisso.de/open-access-publizieren/publisso-system
• Lodel: https://lodel.hypotheses.org
• Repository software for long-term archiving of publications, such as DSpace, EPrints, Invenio or OPUS: https://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Free_and_open-source_repository_software
• the Open Source Academic Publishing Suite developed by FAU: https://os-aps.de/.

For organisational and conceptual recommendations for publishers or editors-in-chief the FAU, see for example the information for editors of Diamond Open Access journals at openscience.uzh.ch or the Open Access publication workflow for scientific books at oa-hochschulverlag.htwk-leipzig.de.

The University Library support Diamond Open Access initiatives such as

• SciPost: https://scipost.org/
• KOALA: https://www.tib.eu/de/services/koala
• SCOAP³: https://scoap3.org/.

Open Access journals without publication costs can be searched via the following sources:

• in the Directory of Open Access Journals, via the filter “Without Fees“: https://doaj.org/
• in the Free Journal Network: https://freejournals.org/current-member-journals/
• a list of German Diamond Open Access journals was also collected by Bielefeld University Library in 2022: https://doi.org/10.4119/unibi/2963331.
• in the Electronic Journals Library (please take note of the DOAJ seal. The EZB does not include any other quality control): https://ezb.ur.de/searchres.phtml?bibid=UBEN&colors=7&lang=en&jq_type1=FKW&jq_term1=Diamond_Open_Access_Journal

In the context of FAU’s Open Science Policy, those FAU editors who have committed themselves to this model should also be highlighted and recognised, for example

• the book series editors of FAU University Press: https://www.university-press.fau.de/herausgeber/
• the editors of series published on OPEN FAU, such as the EZIRE Working Papers of the FAU Research Centre for Islam and Law in Europe (FAU EZIRE), edited by Dr Stephanie Müssig and Dr Jörn Thielmann, or the Erlangen Contributions to the Media Industry, edited by Prof. Dr Svenja Hagenhoff: https://open.fau.de/browse/series
• Prof Dr Stefan Milius, Chair of Computer Science 8 (Theoretical Computer Science), as Editor-in-Chief of Logical Methods in Computer Science: https://lmcs.episciences.org/.

If you are a member of FAU and would like to be mentioned here with your Diamond Open Access journal, series or book publishing activities, please contact us: ub-open-access@fau.de.