Open access to diamonds is being discussed more and more frequently in science policy. But what is it actually about?
You may have heard of green, gold, and even black open access, but now there’s a new avenue to consider in the world of academic publishing. Diamond open access (sometimes called platinum) is an emerging model that allows researchers to publish for free in journals or on other platforms using an open access license. Universities, scientific societies, and funding agencies are just some of the players in the research ecosystem that guarantee diamond open access funding up front out of their own pockets. Journals and platforms that opt for the diamond tier can also generate revenue by charging for value-added services in a freemium model.
Diamond Open Access is free for both authors and readers. This distinguishes it from the Gold model, which charges publication fees – the famous Article Processing Charges (APCs). APCs are charged to scientists in exchange for free distribution of their articles by large commercial publishers such as Elsevier and Springer. They are common in certain disciplines such as biomedicine.
Diamond Open Access is a core principle of the Réseau québécois de recherche et de mutualisation pour les revues scientifiques, whose creation was announced in late May. Led by the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) and endowed with $10 million over five years, the Réseau aims to “support French-language scientific publications in the Quebec academic system” by, among other things, “providing sustained support to help Quebec scientific journals adopt (this open access model).”
“As UNESCO notes, everyone has a right to access scientific publications,” said Mylène Deschênes, FRQ’s Director of Ethics and Legal Affairs. “After all, these articles are publicly funded!” The gold model offers this access, but also requires thousands of dollars in APCs on average. These fees also come from public funds. Thus, this pay-to-publish model puts a strain on research budgets.
The FRQ is not the only funding agency fighting against the status quo. In France, the French National Center for Scientific Research has been promoting the diamond model among its researchers since 2022.. “Given the exorbitant profit margins of major commercial publishers (over 30 percent), it is obvious that APCs do not reflect the real or fair cost of publishing an article,” said Ms. Deschênes.
Breaking the monopoly
Research communities are also raising these concerns. In the fall of 2023, librarians and editors-in-chief met at the Symposium québécois des revues savantes to discuss current issues in scholarly publishing. Their recommendations, presented at the recent Acfas conference, place a strong emphasis on Diamond Open Access. As they noted in their summary report, Diamond Open Access is “the path advocated by independent journals to build a fair ecosystem for scholarly publishing.”
Tanja Niemann, managing director of the Érudit consortium and co-organizer of the Acfas conference, believes it is essential that research communities regain distribution channels. “This was the basic idea when Érudit was founded 25 years ago during the digital transition,” she said. “As journals are forced to go open access, a new crisis is dawning and we should be able to offer the same infrastructure and services as large commercial publishers.”
The development of this “competitive, non-commercial environment” is encouraged by strong incentives. “If researchers don’t have access to a system that guarantees good discoverability of their publications, they won’t participate,” said Ms Niemann. This is particularly relevant because researchers are receptive to these changes. In a survey by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council on its review of open access policy, diamond open access was the model most supported by respondents (more than 55 percent).
Ms. Niemann believes that transformative agreements, while plentiful, send contradictory messages that favor the status quo. These agreements allow university libraries to pay for access to journals from major commercial publishers in exchange for discounts on open access publishing fees typically paid by affiliated scholars. However, two researchers at the University of Ottawa recently found that transformative agreements “create inequities and barriers that exclude many people from the research process, particularly in underfunded disciplines and institutions.”
For example, Université Laval provides a list of discounts on article handling fees. A spokesperson said in an email that ULaval’s library negotiates “the best subscription fee for an information resource” according to the negotiation principles established in 2020 by the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. ULaval’s scientific publications thus remain outside the university’s control.
A passing trend?
Yves Gingras, a sociologist and historian of science at the Université du Québec à Montréal, views these developments with suspicion. He wonders whether the goals pursued by the proponents of open access to diamonds are really reasonable.
“My impression is that we are observing a trend,” he said. “A handful of people are running in one direction and everyone is following the crowd. Few have started to ask fundamental questions like: Who is actually demanding these changes? Why? For what purpose?” Dr. Gingras himself tends to favor green open access, where articles are published without access restrictions in an institutional or disciplinary repository and not necessarily in an open access journal. “To be clear,” he said, “I am not opposed to open access in and of itself (his history has shown that open access articles are more cited). What I cannot support is interference in a generally stable system under the pretext of accommodating citizens who do not have the expertise required to understand most scientific publications. Funding agencies are currently struggling to adequately fund research. I do not see how they can take new initiatives,” however virtuous they may be.
