Diamond Open Access - Too good to be true?

Is Diamond Open Access (DOA) the savior of stressed academic library budgets and OA advocates who are clueless about how to deal with the lack of transformation of subscription-based journals and never-ending prolongations of transformative agreements[1]? One might get that impression from the enthusiasm in current debates on reshaping the academic publishing system, a billion-dollar market that absorbs taxpayer money and serves as a ‘gatekeeper of progress’, with journals determining which research gets published, read, and cited. An ever-increasing volume of research is published openly: Anyone with an internet connection can read and work with such an article. For journal articles with OA, generally, two options have existed: Gold OA for journals that are entirely published without subscriptions and Hybrid OA for journals that continue to sell subscriptions but allow for OA to specific articles. So-called “transformative agreements” make every paper from participating institutions in such outlets OA, but the universities pay for it — instead of paying for subscriptions[2]. These contracts come with a plethora of problems[3] and Gold OA struggles with its distorted incentive for publishers to accept more papers to redeem higher APC revenue[4]. DOA is meant to tackle both: Following the common definition, it implies that there exists neither subscription nor publishing fees. Does that sound too good to be true? [1] http://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20224 [2] https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp8882 [3] http://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20224 [4] https://doi.org/10.1257/000282805774670112