Published on: 16/04/2026
The ALMASI project (Aligning and Mutualizing Nonprofit OA Publishing Services) Diamond Open Access (OA) Policy Forum convenes international, national, and local policymakers and funders in Africa, Europe, and Latin America to discuss nonprofit scholarly publishing policy and funding needs, progress, and challenges. The first European meeting took place online on 9 March 2026 and brought together 130 participants – representatives from governments, research funding organisations, academic institutions, libraries, and other stakeholders interested in advancing Diamond Open Access (OA) publishing – from 42 countries. The session, chaired by Vanessa Proudman, SPARC Europe, included presentations of key ALMASI findings, expert talks on national and institutional Diamond OA publishing policies, and interactive breakout discussions on how to strengthen policy support for this publishing model in national and institutional contexts.
Understanding the Diamond OA policy landscape in Europe
The meeting opened with presentations on the Scoping Report on Nonprofit Publishing Ecosystems (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18257717) and the Landscape Report on Diamond Open Access Publishing in Africa, Europe, and Latin America (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18221355).
Mikael Laakso (Tampere University, Finland) presented findings from the Scoping Report, which aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the Diamond OA ecosystem in Africa, Europe and Latin America. The report establishes common definitions, maps existing research, and examines funding mechanisms, organisational structures, governance models, platforms, services, and publication outputs across the three regions. It also analyses available bibliometric data on Diamond OA journals. The report also highlights national-level platforms and services and their funding models. Institutional publishers (university presses, learned societies) play an important role in sustaining Diamond OA journals, but they still largely rely on volunteer work and in-kind contributions. The findings point to the need for stronger cross-border collaboration. The establishment of the European Diamond Capacity Hub in 2025 represents an important step toward fostering such cooperation and strengthening shared infrastructure for Diamond OA in Europe.
Pilar Rico Castro’s (FECYT: Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología, Spain) presentation focused on the Landscape Report, which provides both cross-regional and regional overviews alongside 45 country case studies across the three regions. The report maps the policy landscape for Diamond OA publishing, analyses sustainability and funding models, and identifies common challenges, with the aim of informing evidence-based policy recommendations. The findings confirm several issues highlighted in the Scoping Report, such as infrastructural fragmentation, a strong national orientation, and a heavy reliance on volunteer labour – and show that, although some European national open access policies mention Diamond OA publishing, they rarely establish legal or regulatory instruments to support, enforce, or incentivise it. Funding for Diamond OA remains uneven and marginal, with rare direct funding streams (e.g. in Spain). At the same time, research assessment systems do not recognise publications in Diamond OA venues and the editorial labour that sustains them, while journal evaluation frameworks continue to prioritise metrics developed by commercial publishers. Policy recommendations stress that Diamond OA publishing should be recognized as critical infrastructure rather than a transitional publishing option, and treated as such in policy design, funding mechanisms, and professional recognition frameworks.
Learning from practice
The second part of the meeting focused on practical examples of national and institutional policies that support Diamond OA publishing.
Thomas Leibundgut, Swiss Federal Open Science Programme, presented the Swiss National Open Access Strategy (revised in 2024), which dedicates one of its six objectives to strengthening Diamond OA publishing. A key priority of the strategy is to ensure financial sustainability and reduce dependence on commercial publishers through Diamond OA, institutional publishing, and secondary publication rights. Two projects are currently funded to support the implementation of these goals. CoDOA is an 18-month consortial funding scheme for high-quality nonprofit Diamond OA journals. DOACH is a smaller project aimed at strengthening the Swiss Open Journal Systems community of practice, and it will build a public portal offering reliable information on Diamond OA publishing, along with an overview of existing structures, tools, and services.
Marie-Emilia Herbet (Université Jean-Moulin Lyon 3, France) described how her institution updated its Open Science Charter in 2025 to place greater emphasis on the Diamond OA model and to introduce clearer indicators for implementation. In the Charter, the concept of Diamond OA is framed through “bibliodiversity”, a term that very much resonates in France in particular. The revised Charter sets out several priorities aimed at strengthening Diamond OA through infrastructure, awareness, monitoring, and quality standards. These include expanding Prairial (a collaborative editorial journal platform for Lyon Saint-Étienne universities), promoting and informing researchers about the Diamond OA model, assessing bibliodiversity by mapping researchers’ publishing practices, endorsing the European Action Plan for Diamond OA, and implementing the quality criteria of the Diamond OA Standard (DOAS) on the Prairial platform.
The discussion continued in breakout rooms, focusing on national and institutional policymaking. Participants noted that while in some countries (e.g., France, Switzerland, and the UK (for books)) Diamond OA publishing is included in policies, the alignment between Diamond OA publishing and research evaluation or career assessment frameworks is still a challenge. And many existing OA policies do not include Diamond OA publishing and need reviewing and updating. A European and/or an international solution is also needed to ensure sustainable funding, a public certification framework, and research assessment reform that recognizes and supports Diamond OA publications.
Next steps
The Diamond OA Policy Forum – Europe will convene biannually, and the next meeting will focus on funding Diamond OA publishing. Planned next steps include turning forum discussions into concrete policy recommendations and support schemes.
The second cross-regional Diamond OA Policy Forum will take place on 30 March 2026 and bring together key insights from European, African, and Latin American meetings, explore common priorities, and discuss Diamond OA policy provisions. The meeting will be held in French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish, and all those interested in advancing Diamond OA policy are invited to join.
Presentations from the European Diamond OA Policy and Funder Forum Meeting: https://almasiproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ALMASI_ForumEurope_March2026.pptx-2.pdf
Recording (if possible, embed in the web page, closer to the beginning of the text, and provide the link in the end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCHqFDQQIA
