Motivation

In August of 2022 the Biden Administration announced that by December 31st of 2025 the results of federally funded research must be made openly available upon publication, mirroring similar international efforts such as Plan S in Europe.  Such directives will catalyze a significant movement towards Open Access (OA) publishing.  Because of requirements for OA, there will be a market demand created for OA journals and more journals will become OA both through conversion of existing journals from a subscription model and through the creation of new OA journals. The model that is likely to be used primarily is a Gold OA approach in which authors of articles are assessed significant article processing charges (APCs) to publish their work.  As APCs become commonplace, and potentially increase, financial stress on authors and institutions is anticipated.  Now is the time to invest in a Diamond OA model void of APCs that focuses on non-profit, high-quality, sustainable OA publishing.   

We are at a critical inflection point when the academic research community can be leaders in the sustainability of our information ecosystem and develop a strong alliance that prioritizes making information openly available. If the ARC remains agnostic about OA issues and continues to let publishers charge high prices for articles to be published openly, the cost to publish will continue to become increasingly unsustainable for researchers and library budgets alike.  These observations motivate the Diamond OA model advocated by the ARC Alliance.