WEBINAR: DIAMAS with CRAFT-OA and PALOMERA – DIAMAS

“The three projects work towards an equitable future for scholarly communication, with academic communities at the centre. The webinar will present this vision and introduce each project’s area of focus. The discussion will demonstrate the projects’ common goal for open and equitable scholarly publishing.

While DIAMAS focuses on developing common standards, guidelines and practices for the Diamond publishing sector, CRAFT-OA and PALOMERA have different aims. The former looks at the IT systems behind journal platforms to help them upscale, professionalise, and reach stronger interoperability. The latter, PALOMERA, is developing actionable recommendations and concrete resources to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for Open Access books.

In the session, DIAMAS will be placed in a broader context, displaying how we collaborate with other actors in the Open Access space and plan for long-term impact in the advancement of community-led publishing.

Participants will have the chance to engage with the three projects and their vision for community-driven open scholarly publishing.”

Job: Project manager | OPERAS

Job Summary

The Project Manager works closely with the Secretary General for the daily implementation and management of the OPERAS’ projects portfolio. The Project Manager will be primarily in charge of OPERAS’ coordinated projects and, on demand, support the coordination of OPERAS’ contribution to participated projects. The main tasks and responsibilities are centred around the day-to-day administration of the consortium, the monitoring of the resources, the development and implementation of the quality and risk management plans and consist of:

Leading preparation of the contractual documentation: grant agreement and consortium agreement;
Supporting the technical or scientific coordinator and the project boards (General Assembly, Project management boards), organising the meetings and writing minutes;
Implementing the consortium progress monitoring;
Coordinating, supervising and submitting the EU periodic reports (financial and technical);
Managing the project budget, distribution of the prefinancing, redistribution of budget in case of amendment;
Set up the necessary procedure for quality and risk management (only for coordinated projects);
Organising the EC review(s) in liaison with the project boards members;
Representing OPERAS vis à vis the EU project officer.

The Project Manager will also contribute to developing the project proposals and set up the Grant Agreement to launch project proposals granted. The Project Manager will be responsible for maintaining and evolving the project management processes as part of the Integrated Management System.

 

OA Diamond & Institutional Publishing Landscape Survey – DIAMAS | open until 30 April, 2023

“The OA Diamond and Institutional Publishing Landscape Survey has just launched. View the questionnaire in full here. With the survey, we hope to map how Institutional Publishing is currently organised in order to understand existing challenges and develop resources, tools,  policies, and strategies which support the Institutional Publishers and associated stakeholders. The survey will remain open until 30 April. DIAMAS will create a registry of “institutional publishing service providers” through the landscape mapping conducted in the survey, 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. Questions are aimed at Institutional Publishing Services Providers (IPSPs) from the European Research Area….”

DIAMAS Project: OA Diamond and Institutional publishing landscape survey of Institutional Publishing Services Providers (IPSPs)

DIAMAS is a new EU-funded project which aims to support Open Access Diamond and institutional publishing by setting new standards, increasing visibility, and promoting the sustainability of a diverse publishing landscape. The project is issuing this survey as a starting point to understand the landscape of institutional publishing in Europe.

With this survey, we hope 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. 
By “OA Diamond and institutional publishing”, we understand 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 information we collect 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 work of the project will culminate in an online portal which can be used by the community to retrieve information and guidance. In order to effectively do this, your input is essential.

Respondents have until 30 April to complete the survey. 

Who should complete the survey?

In short, Institutional Publishing Services Providers (IPSPs) from the European Research Area, including third countries associated and to be associated with Horizon Europe.

By IPSP, we understand 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, persons with a good overview of publishing activities, including the provision and organisation of related services, should complete the survey. Answers can be saved and returned to at a  later stage if respondents must consult others to collect accurate information. We ask for one completed survey per organisation.

DIAMAS: Supporting High Quality Diamond Open Access Publishing (podcast)

In this episode, we are discussing the project Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication, in short: DIAMAS. At the heart of the project is support for Diamond Open Access, i.e. free for the reader as well as the author (no publishing charges). Co-lead of DIAMAS, Pierre Mounier explains the importance of lending support to not-for-profit institutional publishing. Besides the diversity offered by such scholar-led, high quality publication outlets, the multilingualism that they represent is key when the dissemination of knowledge and the promotion of citizen science across Europe is taken into account. The Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Publishing lends verbal support to linguistically diverse scholarly outputs; the EU-funded DIAMAS Project paves the way for stronger and more sustainable infrastructures facilitating them.

Since its inception in September 2022, the project will last for 3 years. An ultimate goal of DIAMAS is to help the providers of publishing services raise the quality and visibility of diamond open access by establishing a Europe-wide capacity center. A sister project, CRAFT-OA, focusing on the purely technical aspects of institutional diamond open access publishing begins in January 2023. The preliminary Diamond OA Journals Study (published March 2021), the first ever global survey of diamond open access journals, serves as foundation for both projects.

 

The recording was made in conjunction with the Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing in December 2022. First published online January 10, 2023.

New Project. DIAMAS, building capacity for OA diamond publishing

The institutional OA diamond publishing sector can be challenged by fragmentation; its visibility can be limited, its service of varying quality, and its sustainability is not always secure. A new European Commission-funded project, DIAMAS, aims to build capacity amongst institutional publishers in Europe to address some of these challenges. It will run for 30-months and started on 1 September with 23 partners collaborating. SPARC Europe is one of the project’s partners.

DIAMAS receives grant to develop Diamond Open Access publishing in Europe | Plan S

Aix-Marseille Université, cOAlition S, and Science Europe are pleased to announce that they are participating in a Horizon Europe project called ‘Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication’ (DIAMAS). The 3-year project, launched on the 1st of September 2022, receives funding in the context of the Horizon Europe call on Capacity-building for institutional open access publishing across Europe.

The DIAMAS project, which was awarded a grant of €3m, brings together 23 European organisations that will map out the landscape of Diamond Open Access publishing in the European Research Area and develop common standards, guidelines and practices for the Diamond publishing sector. The project partners will also formulate recommendations for research institutions to coordinate sustainable support for Diamond publishing activities across Europe.

Moreover, the DIAMAS project will interact closely with the global community of the ‘Action Plan for Diamond Open Access’ signatories. While the project will spearhead some of the activities laid out in the Action Plan, it welcomes complementary actions and contributions. As a first step, DIAMAS project partners and members of the Diamond Open Access Plan Community had the chance to meet and discuss collaboration opportunities during the Diamond Open Access Conference (Zadar, Croatia, 19 – 20 September 2022).

 

Developing Institutional open Access publishing Models to Advance Scholarly communication (DIAMAS) | Funding & tender opportunities Single Electronic Data Interchange Area (SEDIA)

In the transition towards Open Access (OA), institutional publishing is challenged by fragmentation and varying service quality, visibility, and sustainability. To address this issue, DIAMAS gathers 23 organisations from 12 European countries, well-versed in OA academic publishing and scholarly communication.

The project will:

1. Map the current landscape of Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) in 25 countries of the ERA with special attention for IPSPs that do not charge fees for publishing or reading. This will yield a taxonomy of IPSPs and an IPSP landscape report, a basis for the rest of the project.

2. Coordinate and improve the efficiency and quality of IPSPs by developing a European Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP). This quality seal will professionalise, strengthen and reduce the fragmentation of institutional publishing in Europe. EQSIP will serve as a benchmark for a gap analysis of the data in (1). Buy-in and capacity-building is ensured by co-creation with the relevant IPSP communities of practice, creating a Common Access Point for IPSPs, an IPSP registry with 80% of IPSPs in the ERA, publishing guidelines, training materials, self-assessment tools, financial models, and shared cost frameworks. DIAMAS embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion by addressing gender equity in OA publishing and multilingualism in 15 European languages. Special attention is paid to building and enabling the financial sustainability of IPSPs.

3. Formulate community-led, actionable recommendations and strategies for institutional leaders, funders/sponsors/donors, and policymakers in the European Research Area (ERA). Workshops and targeted networking actions will reach and engage institutional decision-makers. In 36 months, DIAMAS will deliver an aligned, high-quality, and sustainable institutional OA scholarly publication ecosystem for the ERA, setting a new standard for OA publishing, shared and co-designed with all stakeholders.

 

European Commission signs first grant agreements under Horizon Europe | European Research Executive Agency

The European Commission recently signed grant agreements with 49 projects that successfully applied to Horizon Europe: Reforming and Enhancing the European R&I System and Research Infrastructures.  

Find out more about these two funding opportunities and the upcoming projects below.   

Reforming and Enhancing the European R&I System 

Reforming the European R&I System is part of the Horizon Europe’s Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area call (Destination 3). 

Call for funding opened on 08 June 2021 and closed on 23 September 2021. 

Out of the 44 applications received, 20 projects covering 15 topics were funded, for a total of about 50.5 million euros of European Commission contribution. 

Projects start between June 2022 and September 2022.

Find below an overview of the selected projects per call topic(s)/type(s) of action:

[…]

Diamond Open Access Conference, Sept 19-20, 2022 (hybrid) | Science Europe

This Diamond Open Access conference is the first hybrid event for the community of organisations and individuals who endorsed the Action Plan for Diamond OA. It follows two webinars in which members of this community could already meet and discuss online; these took place on 22 April and 7 July. The conference is co-organised by Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR).

The goal of the event is to further bring together the community, to provide insights and inspiration to operationalise the Action Plan based on existing good practices, with a vision to develop future common services.

It is also foreseen to introduce to the Horizon Europe project ‘Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication’ (DIAMAS, 2022–2025). This project, to be launched on 1 September, has the objective to contribute to the development of a coherent, high-quality, and sustainable Open Access scholarly communication ecosystem.

The conference will take place in Zadar (Croatia) on 19 and 20 September.

 

Job: Open Science Project Officer (DIAMAS & Skills4EOSC) | OPERAS

The mission requires a sound knowledge of and a strong interest for the open science and open access European landscape, and the ability to correctly assess the needs and challenges in terms of training, skills, best practices, standardisation, sustainability in these areas.

The Open science project officer should be able to collaboratively build a global overview of such needs and challenges that takes into account the specificities of the research communities and their different actors.

The Open science project officer will contribute to the following projects:

DIAMAS
In the transition towards Open Access (OA), institutional publishing is challenged by fragmentation and varying service quality, visibility, and sustainability. To address this issue, DIAMAS gathers 23 organisations from 12 European countries, well-versed in OA academic publishing and scholarly communication. The DIAMAS project will map the current landscape of Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) in 25 countries of the ERA with special attention for IPSPs that do not charge fees for publishing or reading. It will coordinate and improve the efficiency and quality of IPSPs by developing a European Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP). Lastly it will formulate community-led, actionable recommendations and strategies for institutional leaders, funders/sponsors/donors, and policymakers in the European Research Area (ERA). Workshops and targeted networking actions will reach and engage institutional decision-makers.

In 36 months, DIAMAS will deliver an aligned, high-quality, and sustainable institutional OA scholarly publication ecosystem for the ERA, setting a new standard for OA publishing, shared and co-designed with all stakeholders.

Skills4EOSC
Skills4EOSC brings together leading experiences of national, regional, institutional and thematic Open Science (OS) and Data Competence Centres from 18 European countries with the goal of unifying the current training landscape into a common and trusted pan-European ecosystem, in order to accelerate the upskilling of European researchers and data professionals in the field of FAIR and Open Data, intensive-data science and Scientific Data Management. Competence Centres (CC) are seen as centres of gravity of OS and EOSC activities in their countries. These entities can either be established national initiatives (as is the case of ICDI in Italy) or initiatives under establishment (e.g. Austria, Greece and the Nordic countries) or organisations which have the leading or mandated contribution to the OS activities nationally. CCs pool the expertise available within research institutions, universities and thematic and cross-discipline research infrastructures. They offer training and support, empowerment, lifelong learning, professionalisation and resources to a variety of stakeholders, including not only researchers and data stewards, but also funders, decision makers, civil servants, and industry. Thanks to their position at the heart of the above described multi-stakeholder landscape, the CCs represented by the Skills4EOSC partners play a pivotal role in national plans for Open Science and in the interaction with scientific communities. They also have close access to policy makers and the related funding streams. The Skills4EOSC project will leverage this reference role to establish a pan-European network of CCs on OS and data, coordinating the work done at the national level to upskill professionals in this field. The Skills4EOSC CC network will drive the co-creation of harmonised trainer accreditation pathways, academic and professional curricula and skills quality assurance, recognition frameworks, and learning material creation methodologies.

Both projects will start the 1st of September 2022 with a duration of 36 months.

 

Key Responsibilities

Participate in landscaping and mapping activities in both projects
Lead the coordination of collaborative work in various tasks and work packages in both projects where OPERAS is WP/task leader
Lead and participate in the design of capacity/competence centres in both projects
Supervise, write, finalise, and review key deliverables in both projects
Communicate in coordination with OPERAS and project communication managers on the activities and outputs of the projects
Manage the reporting activity for OPERAS in both projects
For DIAMAS project: organise and manage the community network of diamond publishing stakeholders beyond the project consortium

Relationships

Daily with OPERAS contact points in DIAMAS and Skills4EOSC projects
With projects PIs, WP Leaders and tasks leaders in both projects
With other partners in both projects
With OPERAS Coordination Team and in particular with

OPERAS FAIR data officer
OPERAS Community Manager
OPERAS Community Coordinator