Diamond Open Access
What is Open Access Publishing?
The open access (OA) movement is composed of various communities that seek to make scholarly information more widely available. Each contribution to the OA movement brings us one step closer to making information more broadly available to those beyond the academic community. Examples of contributions to the movement range from submitting work to an institutional repository or committing to publish in an open access journal. Participating in the movement can even be as simple as educating others on the importance of considering their own involvement in the scholarly publishing ecosystem.
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. As OA and Open Science become a central focus we must meet the moment and address the issues now with sustainable solutions.
Why Does ARC Alliance Utilize Diamond Open Access?
ARC Alliance is strongly committed to Diamond (also known as platinum) Open Access practices. The defining feature of Diamond OA practices is that journals utilizing this model do not charge fees to either the author or the reader. According to Plan S “Diamond Open Access journals are community-driven, academic-led, and academic-owned publishing initiatives.” These factors make Diamond OA one of the most equitable forms of scholarly communications currently available.
In line with the Budapest Initiative 20th anniversary recommendations, ARC Alliance believes the future of OA publishing should strongly favor publishing models that are controlled by academic-led and nonprofit organizations (Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2022). This is clear through our membership-funded, non-profit status and emphasis on community leadership as opposed to outsourcing the publication process to for-profit companies.