Open Access Diamond journals

2021-03-26

History of Science in South Asia is a so-called OA Diamond journal.  There are no fees for either authors or readers.  

HSSA participated in a recent project commissioned by Coalition-S to evaluate such journals and their meaning and impact in the world of publishing and knowledge dissemination.  This project has now published its results and they can be read here:

https://zenodo.org/record/4558704

Extract:

Context
From June 2020 to February 2021, a consortium of 10 organisations undertook a large-scale study on open access journals across the world that are free for readers and authors, usually referred to as “OA diamond journals”. This study was commissioned by cOAlition S in order to gain a better understanding of the OA diamond landscape.

Presentation
The study undertook a statistical analysis of several bibliographic databases, surveyed 1,619 journals, collected 7,019 free text submissions and other data from 94 questions, and organised three focus groups with 11 journals and 10 interviews with hosting platforms. It collected 163 references in the academic literature, and inventoried 1048 journals not listed in DOAJ.

The results of the study are available in the following outputs:

Findings:

  • A wide archipelago of relatively small journals serving diverse communities
  • OA diamond journals are on the road to full compliance with Plan S
  • A mix of scientific strengths and operational challenges
  • An economy that largely depends on volunteers, universities and government