Diamond Open Access, also known as Platinum or Sponsored. Other related terms are subsidised open access publications and "no fee" journals. The term Diamond Open Access refers to open access journals that do not charge author fees (APCs - Article Processing Charges). It means that the publication is open to readers (as in Gold Open Access) and that authors have not incurred financial costs to publish in the journal (unlike Gold).
The main difference between Gold and Diamond journals is the funding model. APCs are the separating factor between the two forms of Open Access. Journals in Diamond Open Access are usually funded by the institutions and universities associated with the journal. The costs of publishing in such journals are also covered by the fees charged to those who associate themselves in consortia, as well as from grants and advertising.
Diamond Open Access journals use a variety of business models. Some free open access journals have direct or indirect grants from institutions such as universities, laboratories, research centres, libraries, hospitals, museums, scientific societies, foundations or government agencies. In some cases, a separate method of publication (outside Open Access) is also used for funding. Some journals have income from advertising, support services, membership fees, donations, reprints or premium printing or editing. Others, however, rely on volunteers. Journals whose articles are made available through Platinum Open Access are indexed in DOAJ (The Directory of Open Access Journals).
Diamond OA initiatives
Over the last few years, there have been a number of initiatives to support, integrate and promote Diamond Access on a more global scale. In March 2021, the OA Diamond Journals Study report was released, the result of an analysis by cOAlition S and Science Europe. It consisted of an overview of the state of diamond journals at the time, the challenges they faced, and recommendations for next steps. This report was the starting point for subsequent initiatives, one of which was the development of an international Action Plan for Diamond Open Access in March 2022, for which Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and the French National Research Agency (ANR) stood behind. The plan was to align and develop common resources for the entire Diamond Open Access ecosystem, including journals and platforms, while respecting the diversity of cultures, languages and disciplines.
Two Horizon Europe-funded European projects, DIAMAS and CRAFT-OA, have resulted from these activities. The aims of the DAIMAS project (Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication) are to map the current landscape of institutional publishing service providers (IPSPs) in the 25 countries of the European Research Area (ERA), to coordinate and improve the efficiency and quality of IPSPs by developing quality standards for institutional publishing, and to develop recommendations and strategies for institutional leaders, funders and policy makers in the ERA. The CRAFT-OA project, on the other hand, focuses on activities to improve the technical and organisational infrastructure: providing technical improvements, building a community of practice to support overall infrastructure improvements, increasing visibility and discoverability, and integrating diamond publishing with the EOSC and other large-scale data aggregators.
In October 2023, the first Global Summit on Diamond Open Access was held in Mexico. The conference was attended by 688 participants from 75 countries and 457 institutions. The summit called for the establishment of a coordinating mechanism to implement a global Diamond Open Access programme. As a result of the call, in July 2024, UNESCO announced the establishment of the Global Diamond Open Access Alliance to promote this model of scholarly publishing and encourage a more inclusive and transparent dialogue in the academic community.
January 2025 brought further Diamond OA initiatives. ALMASI (Aligning and Mutualizing Nonprofit Open Access Publishing Services Internationally) is a Horizon Europe-funded project, which aims to create a non-commercial, high-quality and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem covering three regions of the world: Africa, Europe and Latin America. It also saw the opening of the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH), a regional hub responsible for coordination, sustainability, training modules, technical tools and large-scale services for European institutional, national and disciplinary centres and diamond publishers and providers.