Exploring diamond open access options
Recently, I’ve visited several schools, offering some details on our open access policy, including what is expected of St Andrews researchers and offering details on the differences between gold and green open access.
While the University prefers green open access—which usually involves zero fees, with authors depositing their accepted manuscript in Pure—many researchers prefer the gold route—which involves a fee being paid by either authors or institutions in order for the article to be freely available on the journal’s website.
I get this impulse—while gold OA costs a considerable amount for funders, researchers or libraries, some find it simpler to have it all available in one place on the publisher’s website. Furthermore, many researchers are not experiencing the actual cost of this, sometimes not aware that a large portion of library budgets are now devoted to read and publish agreements with publishers that enable open access publishing without the author having a bill to pay themselves.
However, while green and gold routes are the dominant OA tracks, there is a third way, one that is gaining increasing popularity and use—diamond open access.
What is diamond open access?
As the video above notes, diamond open access is a model that sees research outputs made available on the publisher website with no cost to either author or reader.
This model is usually built on libraries investing—at a much smaller cost—in various platforms or publishers, with many of these diamond organisations operating out of a university, learned society or as a consortia of institutions.
A key example of this would be the University of St Andrews’ own Journal Hosting Service. Managed by the open access team, this service enables staff and students to propose and create diamond open access journals, with their School, Department, or Centre acting as publisher.
We currently host almost a dozen journals through our Open Journal Systems platform, all of which can be explored freely online at no cost.
Diamond open access publishers and platforms
There are other publishers and platforms that work on a diamond open access model, though.
Open Library of Humanities (OLH)
Founded in 2013 by two academics wanting to see a change in the profit-driven publishing world, OLH now publishes 33 open-access journals, with funding coming from libraries around the world.
There are a whole host of interesting journals to explore here, including but not limited to The Comics Grid, Open Screens, Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, Political Philosophy, and Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.
Edinburgh Diamond
The library publishing arm of the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Diamond has almost 40 journals and conference proceedings created by Edinburgh academics, staff, and students, including humanities and arts-focused journals like Airea, Film-Philosophy, and Scottish Studies, as well as scientific journals such as the Open Journal of Biodiversity and Ecosystems.
Open Journals Collective (OJC)
The newest kid on the block, OJC hasn’t yet launched but there is a lot of buzz around it. Beginning in 2026, though, OJC will work with libraries and publishers—including both of the above organisations—to make academic journals free to read and free to publish in.
OJC aims to flip subscription and hybrid journals to diamond open access, using investment from various bodies—including libraries—to financially support journals who want to make their outputs free for readers and authors.
Diamond OA exists at a global level with new models and initiatives such as OJC developing through community action. At the international level, UNESCO announced the creation of the Global Alliance for Diamond Open Access in July 2024, presenting its vision, mission, and objectives, and including stakeholders in the collaborative effort to promote Diamond OA globally. (Reclaiming academic ownership… p10)
Questions?
If you have questions about the diamond open access model, please contact us at [email protected].
If you are curious about our journal hosting service, then please email us at [email protected].