Principles of Diamond Open Access Publishing: a draft proposal | Plan S

“The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access outlines a set of priorities to develop sustainable, community-driven, academic-led and -owned scholarly communication. Its goal is to create a global federation of Diamond Open Access (Diamond OA) journals and platforms around shared principles, guidelines, and quality standards while respecting their cultural, multilingual and disciplinary diversity. It proposes a definition of Diamond OA as a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Diamond OA is community-driven, academic-led and -owned, and serves a wide variety of generally small-scale, multilingual, and multicultural scholarly communities. 

Still, Diamond OA is often seen as a mere business model for scholarly publishing: no fees for authors or readers. However, Diamond OA can be better characterized by a shared set of values and principles that go well beyond the business aspect. These distinguish Diamond OA communities from other approaches to scholarly publishing. It is therefore worthwhile to spell out these values and principles, so they may serve as elements of identification for Diamond OA communities. 

The principles formulated below are intended as a first draft. They are not cast in stone, and meant to inspire discussion and evolve as a living document that will crystallize over the coming months. Many of these principles are not exclusive to Diamond OA communities. Some are borrowed or adapted from the more general 2019 Good Practice Principles for scholarly communication services defined by Sparc and COAR1, or go back to the 2016 Vienna Principles. Others have been carefully worked out in more detail by the FOREST Framework for Values-Driven Scholarly Communication in a self-assessment format for scholarly communities. Additional references can be added in the discussion.

The formulation of these principles has benefited from many conversations over the years with various members of the Diamond community now working together in the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, cOAlition S, the CRAFT-OA and DIAMAS projects, the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA), Linguistics in Open Access (LingOA), the Open Library of Humanities, OPERAS, SciELO, Science Europe, and Redalyc-Amelica. This document attempts to embed these valuable contributions into principles defining the ethos of Diamond OA publishing….”

English – Knowledge Equity Network

“For Higher Education Institutions

Publish a Knowledge Equity Statement for your institution by 2025, incorporating tangible commitments aligned with the principles and objectives below.
Commit to institutional action(s) to support a sustained increase of published educational material being open and freely accessible for all to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research.
Commit to institutional action(s) to support a sustained increase of new research outputs being transparent, open and freely accessible for all, and which meet the expectations of funders.
Use openness as an explicit criteria in reaching hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. Reward and recognise open practices across both research and research-led education. This should include the importance of interdisciplinary and/or collaborative activities, and the contribution of all individuals to activities.
Define Equity, Diversity and Inclusion targets that will contribute towards open and inclusive Higher Education practices, and report annually on progress against these targets.
To create new mechanisms in and between Higher Education Institutions that allow for further widening participation and increased diversity of staff and student populations.
Review the support infrastructure for open Higher Education, and invest in the human, technical, and digital infrastructure that is needed to make open Higher Education a success.
Promote the use of open interoperability principles for any research or education software/system that you procure or develop, explicitly highlighting the option of making all or parts of content open for public consumption.
Ensure that all research data conforms to the FAIR Data Principles: ‘findable’, accessible, interoperable, and re-useable.

For Funding Agencies

Publish a statement that open dissemination of research findings is a critical component in evaluating the productivity and integrity of research.
Incorporate open research practices into assessment of funding proposals.
Incentivise the adoption of Open Research through policies, frameworks and mandates that require open access for publications, data, and other outputs, with as liberal a licence as possible for maximum reuse.
Actively manage funding schemes to support open infrastructures and open dissemination of research findings, educational resources, and underpinning data.
Explicitly define reward and recognition mechanisms for globally co-produced and co-delivered open educational resources that benefit society….”

 

OAPEN & DOAB POSI self-audit | OAPEN – supporting the transition to open access for academic books

by Laura J. Wilkinson

It is with great pleasure and sense of achievement that we share with you today our POSI self-audit for OAPEN & DOAB (download OAPEN & DOAB POSI self-audit PDF).

As you may know, OAPEN and DOAB are separate but interconnected infrastructures for open access books, governed by the OAPEN Foundation and DOAB Foundation respectively. In practice, our small team of nine people works with both systems on a daily basis. But since the two organisations have different governance, we’ve carried out a self-audit for each. We hope you agree that seeing the two self-audits side-by-side helps to compare and contrast the ways they operate.

[…]

 

Principles of Diamond Open Access Publishing: a draft proposal – the diamond papers

Introduction

The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access outlines a set of priorities to develop sustainable, community-driven, academic-led and -owned scholarly communication. Its goal is to create a global federation of Diamond Open Access (Diamond OA) journals and platforms around shared principles, guidelines, and quality standards while respecting their cultural, multilingual and disciplinary diversity. It proposes a definition of Diamond OA as a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Diamond OA is community-driven, academic-led and -owned, and serves a wide variety of generally small-scale, multilingual, and multicultural scholarly communities. 

Still, Diamond OA is often seen as a mere business model for scholarly publishing: no fees for authors or readers. However, Diamond OA can be better characterized by a shared set of values and principles that go well beyond the business aspect. These distinguish Diamond OA communities from other approaches to scholarly publishing. It is therefore worthwhile to spell out these values and principles, so they may serve as elements of identification for Diamond OA communities. 

The principles formulated below are intended as a first draft. They are not cast in stone, and meant to inspire discussion and evolve as a living document that will crystallize over the coming months. Many of these principles are not exclusive to Diamond OA communities. Some are borrowed or adapted from the more general 2019 Good Practice Principles for scholarly communication services defined by Sparc and COAR1, or go back to the 2016 Vienna Principles. Others have been carefully worked out in more detail by the FOREST Framework for Values-Driven Scholarly Communication in a self-assessment format for scholarly communities. Additional references can be added in the discussion.

The formulation of these principles has benefited from many conversations over the years with various members of the Diamond community now working together in the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, cOAlition S, the CRAFT-OA and DIAMAS projects, the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA), Linguistics in Open Access (LingOA), the Open Library of Humanities, OPERAS, SciELO, Science Europe, and Redalyc-Amelica. This document attempts to embed these valuable contributions into principles defining the ethos of Diamond OA publishing.

 

Data sharing in the context of community-engaged research partnerships – ScienceDirect

“Highlights

 

Data sharing policies should consider to whom benefits do and do not accrue.
Community Engaged Research Principles would increase community benefit.
Funders should develop mechanisms to ensure community benefit from data sharing.
Funders should track impact of data sharing on community-relevant outcomes….”

 

3 Hypotheses for Open Workers | Rayya El Zein | Feb 3, 2023

“…At CS&S, we’re exploring where open has and hasn’t delivered on promises of more access, transparency, and equity. As we do so, we contend that understandings about open access, community governance, and freedom to (re)use need to be critically revisited and refined. Here we outline three hypotheses to guide an assessment of the central values of open work: 1. Open access to governance.  Open access to code, data, and research is not enough. Widening access must include pathways to stewardship and ownership, not simply entry or use. The incorporation of open source within for-profit structures is showing us that wider access has more often facilitated better extraction of data from more users than it has delivered democratization of knowledge or tools. Foregrounding pathways to stewardship and ownership for tech users will shift the ways in which underrepresented communities can engage, leading not only to different representation in positions of power, but also, potentially, different forms of power. Which is why more specificity when we ask, open access to what? is just the beginning. 2. Develop multi-polar power. “Decentralization” is not enough. The push for decentralization without a concurrent proposal for alternative structures of power masks existing hierarchies and exclusions. Building on the first hypothesis regarding open pathways to governance, advocacy for open infrastructure must be decoupled from blanket disavowals of power. Decentralized networks also host and harbor power. The question is: what forms of it are we interested in developing?…”

Open science, closed doors: The perils and potential of open science for research in practice | Industrial and Organizational Psychology | Cambridge Core

This paper advocates for the value of open science in many areas of research. However, after briefly reviewing the fundamental principles underlying open science practices and their use and justification, the paper identifies four incompatibilities between those principles and scientific progress through applied research. The incompatibilities concern barriers to sharing and disclosure, limitations and deficiencies of overidentifying with hypothetico-deductive methods of inference, the paradox of replication efforts resulting in less robust findings, and changes to the professional research and publication culture such that it will narrow in favor of a specific style of research. Seven recommendations are presented to maximize the value of open science while minimizing its adverse effects on the advancement of science in practice.

POSI business plan by ChatGPT | 2022-01-04

“Prompt: Write a new business plan for Elsevier that incorporates the Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI).

ChatGPT response: Executive Summary: Elsevier is a global publisher of scientific, technical, and medical (STM) research, with a long history of publishing high-quality research and a strong reputation in the scholarly community. However, in recent years, there has been growing demand for open access to research and a shift towards more open and collaborative approaches to scholarly communication. In response to this shift, Elsevier is introducing a new business plan that incorporates the Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI).

Key Elements of the New Business Plan: Increased support for open access: Elsevier will increase its support for open access publishing, including the establishment of a new open access journal platform and the expansion of its open access book program…….”

Public Access to Scientific Research Findings and Principles of Biomedical Research—A New Policy for the JAMA Network | Medical Journals and Publishing | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network

“Beginning in 2023, JAMA and all of the journals in the JAMA Network will adopt a new policy that permits authors of original research investigations to deposit their accepted manuscript in a public repository of their choosing immediately on the day that the manuscript is published by the JAMA Network….

With these and future policies, JAMA and the JAMA Network look forward to working collaboratively with scientists, research institutions, policy makers, funders, and other journals to lean in on first principles that support a thriving, robust scientific enterprise. Stakeholders have a shared responsibility to craft solutions that balance equity, accessibility, and sustainability. Together, we will continue to collegially debate and advance the steps to safeguard and evolve the growth and health of our ecosystem, which manifestly includes timely public access to biomedical research.”

Principles – Digital Infrastructure Fund (PUBLIC) – Google Docs

“Layers of open source code underlie the technology that permeates every aspect of life, from hospitals and banking to scientific research and social media. Along with the policies and standards that guide its development, this digital infrastructure is freely shared, developed in public view, and open to participation by all. But much of this infrastructure is under-maintained, and existing modes of support often favor specific corporate and government interests over the broad needs of the public. Our foundations are committed to the creation of an equitable, sustainable and secure digital infrastructure that is solidly grounded in the public interest.

 
The foundations behind this fund have a variety of strategies and funding priorities. But all of us recognize our missions cannot be achieved without a sound infrastructure that is developed squarely in the public interest. This partnership and fund is guided by the following principles which support our shared interests:

 

Open Source Digital infrastructure is a distinct area of focus that also sits in intersection with a number of other critical technology ecosystems like cybersecurity, data, and the internet

More research, drawing on diverse disciplinary and methodological traditions, is needed  to better understand the development and maintenance of open source digital infrastructure

Research can be more effectively moved to practice via pragmatic interventions like frameworks, prototypes, and policies, as well strategic communications and related initiatives.

Corporate and government actors have an important role to play in the sustainability of open source digital infrastructure, but must be complemented by strong civil society and academic institutions who can advocate for the public interest

Since the creation of infrastructure that works for everyone requires broad participation from a diverse range of communities, identities, cultures and geographies, diversity must be centered in the communities that build, maintain, and access open source and digital infrastructure.

Develop work at the intersections of open source and digital infrastructure with other critical social movements focused on democracy, rights, and justice….”

FAIRification Process – GO FAIR

“The FAIR Data Principles apply to metadata, data, and supporting infrastructure (e.g., search engines). Most of the requirements for findability and accessibility can be achieved at the metadata level. Interoperability and reuse require more efforts at the data level. The scheme below depicts the FAIRification process adopted by GO FAIR, focusing on data, but also indicating the required work for metadata: …”

DOAJ commits to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) | DOAJ News Service

This is a post by our Managing Director, Joanna Ball.

DOAJ is proud to be a community-driven infrastructure. It is one of the most well-established open infrastructures, having grown and developed considerably since its founding by Lars Bjørnshauge in 2003. Its criteria have been adopted as an unofficial gold standard in Open Access journal publishing across the community. 

I am pleased to share the news that we are committing to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). The principles align with our core values, mission and identity as an open, global and trusted infrastructure.

[…]

 

FAIREST: A Framework for Assessing Research Repositories | Data Intelligence | MIT Press

Abstract:  The open science movement has gained significant momentum within the last few years. This comes along with the need to store and share research artefacts, such as publications and research data. For this purpose, research repositories need to be established. A variety of solutions exist for implementing such repositories, covering diverse features, ranging from custom depositing workflows to social media-like functions.

In this article, we introduce the FAIREST principles, a framework inspired by the well- known FAIR principles, but designed to provide a set of metrics for assessing and selecting solutions for creating digital repositories for research artefacts. The goal is to support decision makers in choosing such a solution when planning for a repository, especially at an institutional level. The metrics included are therefore based on two pillars: (1) an analysis of established features and functionalities, drawn from existing dedicated, general purpose and commonly used solutions, and (2) a literature review on general requirements for digital repositories for research artefacts and related systems. We further describe an assessment of 11 widespread solutions, with the goal to provide an overview of the current landscape of research data repository solutions, identifying gaps and research challenges to be addressed.