Diamond Open Access: combining openness, quality and financial sustainability
Open access to research results is one of the fundamental principles of scientific development. Increasing attention is being paid to the Diamond Open Access (DOA) model, which creates mutually beneficial conditions for both authors and readers. Researchers can publish their work free of charge, while readers gain open and unrestricted access to scholarly publications.
What is Diamond Open Access?
Diamond Open Access (DOA) is a publishing model in which articles are free of charge for both authors and readers. Publication costs are covered by research institutions, scholarly societies, and foundations rather than through article processing charges (APCs).
Source: https://udoacc.org.ua/
Benefits and challenges of Diamond Open Access for the Ukrainian research community
Among open access publishing models, Diamond Open Access uniquely eliminates financial barriers for both authors and readers. This advantage makes it particularly attractive for Ukraine’s academic publishing sector, where funding constraints remain a significant obstacle to the development of science.
At the same time, a logical question arises: if authors do not pay publication fees and readers have free access to articles, how can a journal ensure stable operations? High-quality publishing requires resources for editorial management, technical support, indexing, and archiving.
To address this challenge, the state should introduce competitive funding mechanisms that help leading Ukrainian scholarly journals cover publishing costs and meet international standards. For example, special initiatives are being developed worldwide to strengthen the DOA model, such as the DIAMAS resource suite (https://diamasproject.eu/), which helps publishers assess their costs and identify pathways toward sustainable development.
DIAMAS (Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication) is a European research project aimed at building a high-quality and sustainable ecosystem for institutional scholarly publishing.
However, financial sustainability is not the only vulnerability in this area. Another challenge for DOA journals is maintaining institutional balance. This refers to achieving a balance among contributing institutions and the geographic spread of authors. Such balance can be difficult to maintain when a journal is funded by a single organization that is primarily interested in publishing the articles of its own staff.
Institutional balance in Diamond Open Access journals
When publication costs are covered by a single institution, especially one that has a vested interest in the publication activity of its researchers, the DOA model may lead to an excessive concentration of articles from authors affiliated with that institution. This practice negatively affects the proportion of publications authored by representatives of a single Ukrainian institution, organization, or enterprise, which is one of the quality criteria for scholarly journals seeking recognition under the new requirements for Category B professional journals (https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/z0129-26#Text). A share exceeding 50 percent is considered poor practice.
This requirement is also taken into account during the selection of journals for indexing in Scopus and Web of Science.
This raises an important question: how can a scholarly journal maintain institutional diversity?
Why is it important?
A journal should be open to a broad range of authors and ensure impartial peer review regardless of researchers’ affiliations. If most publications come from authors affiliated with a single institution, external experts, readers, and bibliometric databases may conclude that the journal primarily serves an internal function rather than facilitating broad scholarly communication. For this reason, when journals are evaluated for inclusion in international databases, including Scopus and Web of Science, the geographical and institutional affiliations of authors, editors, and reviewers are taken into consideration.
Therefore, diversity among authors demonstrates that a journal serves as a respected platform for the wider scholarly community rather than merely an internal university publication.
Are there limits on the number of articles from authors affiliated with the same institution?
There is no specific percentage that formally regulates the number of publications by authors from a founding institution. At the same time, a high proportion of international authors and authors from other institutions demonstrates a journal’s openness and willingness to operate according to best international practices.
How can institutional balance be ensured?
To achieve an appropriate level of diversity, editorial teams should:
- actively attract authors from other institutions, both in Ukraine and abroad;
- prevent the dominance of publications by representatives of a single institution (it is advisable to establish a target proportion for each issue (typically, no more than 20–30% of authors should be affiliated with the same institution) and consistently monitor compliance during issue preparation. This policy should also be clearly stated on the journal’s website);
- expand editorial boards by including independent external experts from Ukrainian and international institutions;
- implement a robust peer-review policy (double-blind peer review conducted by at least two independent reviewers is considered best practice).
Author: Daria Melnyk
Text editing: Olena Herasymova
