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Introduction to DOAS

Abstract

The Diamond OA Standard (DOAS) is a cornerstone of the DIAMAS project. DOAS is focused on aligning quality and best practices across non-fee-based open access scholarly journals, more commonly known as Diamond OA. DOAS has been developed in different stages and derives from the Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP), a refined framework of quality standards that establishes a unified benchmark, prioritising quality, transparency, sustainability and equity. DOAS presents a two-level approach to compliance with its standards, distinguishing between required and desired elements. It meets a variety of institutional publishing demands, and contributes to enhancing the accessibility and quality of Diamond OA journals.

Main Text

The Diamond OA Standard (DOAS) is a cornerstone of the DIAMAS project. DOAS is focused on aligning quality and best practices across non-fee-based open access scholarly journals, more commonly known as Diamond OA. DOAS has been developed in different stages and derives from the Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP), a refined framework of quality standards that establishes a unified benchmark, prioritising quality, transparency, sustainability and equity. DOAS presents a two-level approach to compliance with its standards, distinguishing between required and desired elements. It meets a variety of institutional publishing demands, and contributes to enhancing the accessibility and quality of Diamond OA journals. The ultimate mission of DOAS is the advancement of science and scholarship. The quality parameters it puts forward should be viewed as a public good.

DOAS aims at establishing a common quality standard for Diamond OA publishers  based on seven core components, including funding, governance, and open science practices. Developed through an iterative refinement process, EQSIP V1.0 integrated relevant standards from 71 documents, followed by a gap analysis and EQSIP V2.0 further refined the structure and content of V1.0 based on the feedback and the recommendations of the gap analysis, and including the co-creative input from various publishing communities across Europe. Eight focus groups and a public consultation process were taken into account in finalising EQSIP V2.0, ensuring inclusivity and representativity. This collaborative effort allowed DOAS to evolve into a comprehensive standard for Diamond OA publishing in Europe and beyond, reflecting the diverse needs of Diamond OA publishers. The iterative approach adopted in its elaboration ensures DOAS's adaptability and provides a good representation of evolving scholarly publishing practices.

The seven core components of DOAS are:

  1. Funding: This component aims at ensuring a sustainable Diamond OA business model, editorial independence, and cost transparency.
  2. Governance: The purpose of this component is to define and establish ownership and control by the scholarly community, transparent mission-driven strategic governance, and clear relations with service providers. 
  3. Open Science practices: This component promotes open science policies, authors' rights, intellectual property rights, licensing practices, and sharing via a repository.
  4. Editorial management: This component emphasises the importance of strong independent editorial bodies, transparency in peer review, editorial quality processes, and research integrity.
  5. Technical service efficiency: This component aims at ensuring strong publishing infrastructures, interoperability and metadata robustness, as well as appropriate collaboration and preservation strategies.
  6. Visibility, communication, marketing, and impact: This component enhances the visibility, communication, dissemination, and impact of published content through indexing, communication through various channels, and the provision of comprehensive usage metrics.
  7. Equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging (EDIB), gender, and multilingualism: This component focuses on promoting EDIB policies and practices, and ensuring equal participation, accessibility, and multilingualism as key quality elements.
     

DOAS offers two levels of compliance with its standards, distinguishing between required and desired elements. The required elements are necessary to meet the quality standard, while the desired elements provide advanced recommendations aimed at further improving compliance with the quality standard.Through this framework, Diamond OA publishers can improve the quality and transparency of governance, processes and workflows in their journal publishing activities, ensuring a common standard of transparency, accessibility, and integrity in scholarly publishing practices across disciplines and regions. Ultimately, this effort to align publishing standards across Diamond OA publishers will benefit both the scholarly community and society at large.


References


Further reading

  • Brun, V., Torny, D., & Pontille, D. (2023). D3.3 report on the gap analysis results_Under EC review (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10083615
  • Ševkušić, M., & Kuchma, I. (2023). DIAMAS deliverable: D3.1 IPSP best practices quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems for Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10407498 
     

Glossary


Licensing

This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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