Focused on collaboration and practical outcomes, the CRAFT‑OA project enhanced the tools supporting Diamond Open Access journals while bringing the community closer together.
“Diamond Open Access (OA)’ refers to an equitable model of scholarly publication that charges no fees to authors or readers and in which the content-related elements of publication are owned and controlled by the scholarly communities.” (European Diamond Capacity Hub)
To do this, it engaged Diamond OA journal editors and the technical community that builds the open-source platforms, plugins, code, etc. that make Diamond OA publishing possible. It asked questions about what improvements and additions to the technology are needed, what technical specifications/standards Diamond OA publishers need to implement to make their journals findable and visible, and what training on these technologies and specifications/standards needs to be created.
“What improvement are needed for the technology that supports Diamond OA?”
“What technical specifications/standards do Diamond OA publishers need to implement to be findable and visible?”
“What training on these technologies and specifications/standards needs to be created?”
And then the project members put their heads and hands together to create. And these are the results…
Six “Key Exploitable Results”
As a Horizon Europe project, CRAFT-OA was required to identify its “Key Exploitable Results” (KERs). According to the European Commision, a result is defined as: “Any tangible or intangible output of the action, such as data, knowledge and information whatever their form or nature, whether or not they can be protected, which are generated in the action as well as any attached rights, including intellectual property rights”. A Key Exploitable Result (KER) is an identified main interesting result (as defined above) which has been selected and prioritised due to its high potential to be “exploited” – meaning to make use and derive benefits – downstream the value chain of a product, process or solution, or act as an important input to policy, further research or education. KERs are selected based on their degree of innovation, exploitability, and impact. CRAFT-OA identified the following KERs:
A central registry of scholar-led Diamond OA journals in Europe that boosts their visibility and discoverability by providing interoperable metadata and enhanced recognition across platforms.
Sustained by: European Diamond Capacity Hub; Göttingen University; University of Warsaw; OpenAIRE
A suite of new and improved functionalities within the Open Journal Systems platform to enhance metadata quality, support multilingual content, and improve GDPR-compliant handling of editorial and reviewer data.
Sustained by: Public Knowledge Project; TIB; Federation of Finnish Learned Societies
A data-driven dashboard component integrated with the OpenAIRE MONITOR service, designed to help Diamond OA publishers access analytics and insights to support publication workflows.
Sustained by: OpenAIRE; University of Göttingen; DOAJ
A continuously updated and sustainable handbook documenting best practices, standards, and technical guidance for Diamond Open Access publishing. Among other resources, this collection includes all the training materials and sessions developed in the CRAFT-OA project.
Sustained by: European Diamond Capacity Hub; Hamburg University
A collection of additional plugins for the Open Journal Systems platform that extend support for Diamond OA publishing needs and interoperability with other tools.
Sustained by: Masarak University; Public Knowledge Project; Aix/Marseille University
A structured set of documentation that helps Diamond OA publishers understand and engage with the technical and indexing requirements of major scholarly publication indexes and aggregators.
Sustained by: Open Edition; European Diamond Capacity Hub; Masarak University
Each result will be maintained by the community through different collaboration constellations. Read the Exploitation and Sustainability report for details. Below is a graphic representation of all results and the organisations involved.
Other results
Besides the 6 KERs listed above, CRAFT-OA leaves behind a collection of documentation, our “Deliverables”, on the work completed. This documentation ensures transparency in our processes and communicates important details for others to learn from. Our deliverables are all published with a Creative Commons Attribution license and individual DOIs (digital object identifiers) on Zenodo, an open, online repository for research outputs. We established three Zenodo “communities” to help organise our results:
- CRAFT-OA: All CRAFT-OA deliverables and slides related to training sessions and presentations delivered.
- CRAFT-OA Conference October 6-8 2025: Slide decks and posters from presentations at the CRAFT-OA conference
- 2nd CRAFT-OA Summer School for Journal Editors 2025: Slide decks from training sessions at the CRAFT-OA summer school (the materials for this second summer school are updated versions of those from the first summer school)
Where Zenodo wasn’t appropriate for storing a result, due to its technical nature, we added them to GitHub, a platform for developers to store, manage, track, and share their code. This is where the “6 OJS plugins” and the “Guide to Scholarly Indexes” mentioned above are shared with the community. The CRAFT-OA-developed Lodel Interoperability Bundle and Lodel Helloworld Bundle are available there.
Additionally, six scientific publications related to CRAFT-OA were published by project members:
- Bargheer, M., Klaus, T., Müller, K. (2025): Europäische Ansätze zur Stärkung von institutionellen Diamond Open Access Journals. Das offene Bibliotheksjournal. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/6142
- Arasteh, S., Bargheer, M., Gingold, A., Laakso, M., Mounier, P., Rooryck, J. (FORTHCOMING): The Diamond Discovery Hub Criteria for Diamond Open Access Journals. Libellarium.
- Arasteh, S., Bargheer, M., Varachkina, H. (FORTHCOMING): Knowing what’s missing, identifying how to overcome barriers – a workshop report from the OPERAS Conference 2024. Libellarium.
- Arasteh, S., Kuchma, I., & Ševkušić, M. (2025): The DIAMAS project capacity building for institutional publishing in the European Research Area. Das Offene Bibliotheksjournal. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/6131
- Bardi, A., Bargheer, M., & Manghi, P. (2023): A Discovery Hub for Diamond Open Access publishing. Information and Research Science Connecting to Digital and Library Science 2023. Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Information and Research Science Connecting to Digital and Library Science. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3365/short12.pdf
- Rooryck, J., Bargheer, M., & Mounier, P. (2023): Diamond is for everyone. Research Professional News. https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-views-of-europe-2023-6-diamond-is-for-everyone/
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.