On 17 March 2022, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) signed the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, which identifies concrete measures to expand a diamond open access publishing culture. It was published in early March by Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and the French National Research Agency (ANR) (open-access.network reported).
In the diamond open access publishing model, there are no fees for authors or readers and the publication infrastructure is funded by scientific institutions or scientific associations. There are an estimated 29,000 diamond open access journals worldwide. 45 percent of these are in Europe.
The Action Plan sets four priorities that are consistent with the DFG's commitment to open access:
- Improving the efficiency and collaboration of diamond open access journals and platforms.
- Standardisation and harmonisation of quality requirements
- Improving the skills of researchers and publishers and establishing a supranational non-profit centre of excellence
- Optimising the sustainability of diamond open access publishing infrastructures
The DFG promotes the diamond open access model in particular in the funding programme Infrastructures for Scholarly Publishing.
Source: DFG, German Research Foundation - DFG supports "Action Plan for Diamond Open Access"