Scaling up Diamond Open Access Journals

Session outline

Diamond open access (OA) is championed as a more open, equitable and inclusive, community-driven journal publishing model, especially when compared against other commercially owned, author pay and subscription models. Additionally, demand for not-for-profit open access journal publishing is rapidly growing amongst academics and funders, however, there is an acute lack of capacity and funding for journals to sustainably meet this demand. There are many barriers to solving these complex challenges, but one new initiative called the Open Journals Collective aims to disrupt the current landscape by offering a more equitable, sustainable and alternative solution to the traditional and established payment structures. Join us in this session where we will hear about this new and exciting community-run diamond open access funding model, pioneered for and by university presses.

During the session we will hear from the conveners of the collective to learn more about why and how it came to light, what it offers and why it is needed. We will hear about the experiences of a library / institution with various OA journal models including their interactions with commercial publishers, as well as perspectives from a journal Editor who, alongside the journal board, resigned from a subscription journal and successfully launched a new and competing diamond open access journal.

Speakers

• Caroline Edwards, Executive Director, Open Library of Humanities and Senior Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.
• Chris Banks, Consultant, Community Trust Co-Chair, Honorary Fellow, & Retired Library Director.
• Arash Abizadeh, R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, McGill University, Canada, and Associate Editor of Free & Equal: A Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs.
• Ian Caswell, Journals Manager, UCL Press