Image: paulbr75 / 1992, via Pixabay
Hub will coordinate initiatives around the publication model involving no author fees
A European ‘hub’ intended to build capacity around the diamond model of open access will launch in Madrid in January, the open access initiative Plan S has announced.
Under the diamond model, articles are made openly available to readers at no cost to authors, facilitated by the publishing platform receiving longer-term financial support, often from research funders or institutions.
The model is gaining support as author-pays open access is increasingly seen as too expensive by politicians and as being discriminatory against those less able to pay.
The European Diamond Capacity Hub “aims to strengthen the diamond open access community in Europe by supporting European institutional, national and disciplinary capacity centres and diamond publishers and service providers”, Plan S said on 29 October.
It will provide coordination, training modules, tools and services, meeting needs set out in a 2022 action plan developed by groups including Plan S and Science Europe, the association of major research funding and performing organisations.
Plan S said the hub, which will be hosted by the Operas initiative on open access, has received initial financial support from the French National Research Agency and the CNRS, France’s multidisciplinary research agency.
It added that the hub will aim to inspire other regions to support a global open access framework that Unesco is consulting on. Diamond open access hubs already exist in Africa and Latin America.
The hub, which soft-launched earlier this month, will launch fully on 15 January at an event in Madrid hosted by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology.
It will follow an event the day before unveiling an EU-funded project called Almasi that will aim to improve understanding of non-profit open access publishing in Africa, Latin America and Europe.
