UiT launches its Diamond Open Access programme

UiT The Arctic University of Norway has, for several years, worked systematically to ensure that researchers can both publish and access research articles through open access channels. At the same time, UiT, like many other universities, must allocate significant sums each year to pay for access to commercial journals and literature databases.

In recent years, efforts have been made to shift payments from access to reading towards open access publishing in commercial journals. Such expenses fall under the umbrella term APCs ("Article Processing Charges"), which are linked to national consortium agreements with major publishers ("Publish and Read", PAR agreements).

UiT and Open Science

UiT adheres to the Horizon Europe Programme Guide's clear objectives and guidelines for the management of research data, in line with the motto "As open as possible, as closed as necessary."
UiT has also signed declarations to follow principles related to open science, including the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
Researchers at UiT can receive support to cover article processing charges and book publishing charges from a dedicated open access publishing fund in cases where publishers require this.
Researchers at UiT can publish research articles openly accessible through UiT's own infrastructure for diamond journals, Septentrio Academic Publishing.
They can also deposit articles in the National Research Archive (NVA), which is a shared system for registering and reporting research activities for institutions within the university and college sector, the research institute sector, and the health sector in Norway.
Additionally, researchers at UiT can store research data in the national, generic archive called DataverseNO.
From 2025, UiT will introduce a support programme for Diamond Open Access. This means that funds will increasingly be allocated to the operation and development of scholar-led open publishing.

The benefits of diamond publishing

How can APC-related expenses be reduced, phased out, and redirected towards the operation of open access publishing channels? UiT believes this can be achieved through Diamond Open Access.

'This is a much better alternative, both in terms of socio-economic benefits and because the model allows for greater academic freedom,' says Per Pippin Aspaas, Senior Academic Librarian at UiT.

With the diamond model, no payment is required from either the reader or the author. An important goal of the diamond model is to democratise not only reading but also knowledge production.

The model entails that publishing is scholar-led and carried out on platforms operated by the research institutions themselves. The publishing process is entirely governed by academic, rather than commercial, considerations.

As a starting point, UiT has decided to allocate at least six per cent of its budget for the purchase of academic articles to support Diamond Open Access.

'Publishing statistics show that approximately six per cent of research articles written by researchers at Norwegian universities are published in diamond journals. The resources for this publishing activity are very limited. They depend on public funding to function,' Aspaas points out.

A French university leads the way

Université de Lorraine is considered to be a pioneer in diamond publishing. They terminated their agreements with publishers such as Springer (2017) and Wiley (2023) and redirected the saved funds to an open science fund, with a dedicated portion allocated to the operation of Diamond Open Access journals.

The earmarked grant covers expenses such as layout, language editing, editorial meetings, and workshops. There are no requirements regarding language or subject area for the publication of academic articles in these journals. However, it is required that at least one member of the journal's editorial board is employed by the Université de Lorraine, or that 'the journal's thematic focus is of strategic importance to the Lorraine region.'

'UiT is now launching its own support programme inspired by Université de Lorraine and other pioneering institutions. We are doing this to ensure that a fair share of the budget supports non-commercial, scholar-led publishing activities in journals,' concludes Aspaas.

Read about what the diamond programme will include here (Norwegian).

Note: This is an extended version of an article originally published i Yeryun's online magazine Spark.

Kortnytt fra The University Library, Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, Faculty of Science and Technology, Faculty of Law

Bredesen, Kim kim.bredesen@uit.no Rådgiver