1. Introduction

Diamond Open Access (OA)¹ journals are often managed by small teams with limited resources, making it difficult to keep pace with evolving policy developments, best practices and technical requirements. Support and guidance are needed to help these journals adopt current best practices.

The guidelines and policy and document templates in this document are designed to help Diamond OA journals establish themselves as trustworthy sources of knowledge by providing practical tools to enhance quality and align with best practices in OA publishing. These non-exhaustive materials build upon established frameworks, including the DOAJ’s Basic Criteria, the Best Practices Checklist for Diamond OA Publishers, and the Diamond Open Access Standard (DOAS) developed by the Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models To Advance Scholarly Communication (DIAMAS) project, taking into account the specific challenges faced by Diamond OA journals in Africa and aiming to provide practical, adaptable solutions.

The document includes:

• Essential elements of Diamond OA journals
• Journal Policies Template, as well as Author Statement, Conflict of Interest and Licence Agreement templates
• Technical guidelines: elements to include in article landing pages and the full-text of the article, displaying licensing information, general advice regarding journal websites and accessibility.