Written by Jorina Fenner
The CRAFT-OA project entered its last six months and I would like to highlight some of the activities of the project’s work package “Technical Standards for professional Institutional Open Access” (WP 3) in this blog post. Led by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), this work package brings together institutions that reflect both the size and diversity of the CRAFT-OA project: Göttingen State and University Library , OPERAS, TSV , TIB , SRCE, ZRC SAZU, OpenAIRE, the University of Turin, EGI , the University of Zadar , IBL PAN , SUB Hamburg , and Aix Marseille Université collaborate in the work package to support Diamond Open Access (OA) journals in following technical publication standards. All the while, it aims to create training and material that meets the community’s challenges locally as well as globally – from the community for the community.
Taking stock: Which technical standards are Diamond OA journals facing?
As a first step, the work package’s aim was to scope the many best practices requirements that Diamond OA journals are facing with regard to technical publishing standards. For this purpose, a number of policy documents were examined. Plan S (European Science Foundation, n.d.) and the Extensible Quality Standard in Institutional Publishing (EQSIP v1) – the predecessor of the DOAS – Diamond Open Access Standard (Consortium of the DIAMAS project, 2024) were consulted. Additionally, we reviewed the inclusion criteria (DOAJ, n.d.) of the DOAJ and the OpenAIRE Guidelines (OpenAIRE, 2022). The results of this survey, which included technical standards ranging from the usage of the ISSN identifiers to metadata exchange protocols, such as OAI-PMH, were then categorized according to the FAIR1 principles. The overview of the diverse standards identified was published in the D3.1 deliverable of CRAFT-OA “Report on Standards for Best Publishing Practices and Basic Technical Requirements in the Light of FAIR Principles” (Armengou et al., 2023). Additionally, the key results were captured in a blog post (Posavec et al., 2024a) where the different categories are mapped out interactively and they were discussed with the community at the 2024 OASPA conference as well as the German-speaking Open-Access-Tage 2024.
What are the challenges for Diamond OA journals in implementing technical publication standards?
Following the overview of technical publishing standards and requirements, D3.2 of CRAFT-OA (Laakso et al., 2024) foregrounds in which areas of these identified standards Diamond OA journals face difficulties. Along the strands of identifiers, metadata, content, website features a number of data sources are examined in addition to a literature review and case studies. The data sources included three data sets from the DAOJ, namely rejected applications, the public data set and article-level metadata, (preliminary) results from the DIAMAS survey (Armengou,et al., 2023) conducted as part of the CRAFT-OA sister project DIAMAS and the survey results from the Open Access Diamond Study (Bosman et al., 2021). Furthermore, we collected information from open source publishing software (OJS, Janeway, Lodel) to cross check whether they enable the adherence to the different technical publishing standards. In addition, case studies from publication platforms on the uptake of technical publication standards by the journals on the publication platforms (TIB Open Publishing, HRCAK, journal.fi, OpenEdition) are presented. This report is also available as a synopsis on the CRAFT-OA Blog (Posavec et al., 2024b).
Training Materials and Training Sessions on Implementing Technical Standards
Based on the gap analysis (D3.2) described above, the CRAFT-OA consortium members of the workpackage develop training material that is modelled specifically to address the challenges which were identified. A collection of the material is available via the Training Materials and Training Sessions on Implementing Technical Standards Toolkit hosted by TIB. The material and trainings range from hands-on workshops, for example at the CRAFT-OA summer school or the CRAFT-OA Tech Event, to self-paced courses and coffee lecture recordings. The topics are presented in accordance with the D3.2 categories of identifiers, metadata, content and website features with the addition of overarching topics, the FAIR publishing self-assessment toolkit and training session and community consultations. To ensure availability, each material or training session is stored federated at the institution that developed them. The coffee lecture recordings, for instance, may be found as part of a playlist in TIB’s AV-Portal. Additionally, the material created in this task can be used in training sessions organized in accordance with the “Reusable Curriculum for Upskilling Trainings” (Kupreyev et al., 2024). Selected training material is indexed in the “Publisher’s Handbook for Diamond Open Access“ developed in the CRAFT-OA project.
- Findable – Accessible – Interoperable – Reusable ↩︎
References
Armengou, C., Aschehoug, A., Ball, J., Bargheer, M., Bosman, J., Brun, V., de Pablo Llorente, V., Franczak, M., Frantsvåg, J. E., Hersperger, O., Klaus, T., Kramer, B., Kuchma, I., Laakso, M., Manista, F., Melinščak Zlodi, I., Mounier, P., Pölönen, J., Pontille, D., … Wnuk, M. (2023). Institutional Publishing in the ERA: Results from the DIAMAS survey. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10022184
Armengou, C., Edig, X. van, Laakso, M., & Umerle, T. (2023). CRAFT-OA Deliverable 3.1 Report on Standards for Best Publishing Practices and Basic Technical Requirements in the Light of FAIR Principles. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.8112662
Bosman, J., Frantsvåg, J. E., Kramer, B., Langlais, P.-C., & Proudman, V. (2021). OA Diamond Journals Study. Part 1: Findings. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.4558704
Consortium of the DIAMAS project. (2024). The Diamond OA Standard (DOAS). https://zenodo.org/records/13820036
DOAJ. (n.d.). Guide to applying – DOAJ. Retrieved February 25, 2025, from https://doaj.org/apply/guide/
European Science Foundation. (n.d.). Plan S Principles | Plan S. Retrieved February 25, 2025, from https://www.coalition-s.org/plan_s_principles/
Kupreyev, M., Fenner, J., & Müller, L. (2024). CRAFT-OA Deliverable 2.2 Reusable curriculum for upskilling trainings. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10943284
Laakso, M., Edig, X. van, Fenner, J., Armengou, C., Gingold, A., Pispiringas, L., & Šterbenc Svetina, B. (2024). CRAFT-OA Deliverable 3.2: Report on challenges and help measures faced by OA journals and platforms. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10496594
OpenAIRE. (2022). OpenAIRE Guidelines—OpenAIRE Guidelines documentation. https://guidelines.openaire.eu/en/latest/
Posavec, K., Kupreyev, M., & Arasteh, S. (2024a). Expanding the potential of Diamond Open Access Journals – CRAFT-OA. CRAFT-OA Blog. https://www.craft-oa.eu/expanding-the-potential-of-doajs/
Posavec, K., Kupreyev, M., & Arasteh, S. (2024b). Overcoming Gaps and Building Bridges – CRAFT-OA. CRAFT-OA Blog. https://www.craft-oa.eu/overcoming-gaps-and-building-bridges/
CRAFT-OA is funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement no. 101094397. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.