DIAMAS Project: OA Diamond and Institutional publishing landscape survey

The DIAMAS (Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication) project - of which Aix-Marseille Université is coordinator along with 22 other European organizations - aims to strengthen diamond open access and institutional publishing by setting new standards, increasing its visibility and promoting the sustainability of a diverse publishing landscape. In this context, Aix-Marseille Université invites the staff of university publishing services to answer a survey recently launched by the project to map the landscape of institutional open access diamond publishing.

Aims and background of the survey

The purpose of this survey is to map how this sector of scholarly communication is currently organised in order to understand existing challenges and begin to develop resources, tools, policies and strategies which support the relevant stakeholders.

“OA Diamond and institutional publishing” means publishing by an institution, unit, or person that is part of an institution. An ‘institution’ is defined in the DIAMAS context as an academic organisation or unit whose main mission and scope is to perform, fund, or promote the practice of research and scholarship. Special attention will be paid to publishing initiatives that do not charge fees for publication to either authors or readers (OA Diamond)

The collected informaition will be used to develop a range of outputs and tools which will offer practical help to institutional publishers. Through the landscape mapping conducted in this survey, DIAMAS will create a registry of “institutional publishing service providers”, building a community ready to share knowledge and collaborate. A series of best practices, policy recommendations, and guidelines will be created to help strengthen the community and set evidence-based quality standards.

The survey is open until April 30.

Who can take the survey?

Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) in the European Research Area are invited to answer this survey to share their editorial practices.

An IPSP is an entity that provides or coordinates a set of services for institutional academic publishing to the academic community. These services may be provided by the institutional publisher itself (in which case the institution publisher is also the IPSP) or by other entities inside or outside the institution.

Within each IPSP, people with a good overview of publishing activities, including the provision and organisation of related services, are invited to complete the survey.

A planned webinar to help complete the survey

To assist respondents, DIAMAS is hosting SURVEY-A-THONS webinars designed to help complete the survey, addressing issues, questions or queries that may arise during the completion of the form. The webinar offered in French will take place on April 6 at 10:00 am. Other languages are also available on various dates leading up to the survey's closing day (April 30).