The Diamond Discovery Hub (DDH) aims to be a comprehensive registry of institutionally published and scholar-led Open Access (OA) journals, without author fees, in Europe. It is designed to improve the visibility and discoverability of Diamond OA journals.
The goal of cataloguing every Diamond OA journal in Europe is ambitious, especially when starting from scratch. To address this challenge, we turned to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a well-established global directory already listing 13,720 journals without fees1, including a substantial number based in Europe. DOAJ’s rigorous verification process ensures the quality of listed journals, making it an excellent foundation to build on. Importantly, many of DOAJ’s evaluation criteria overlap with the six operational Diamond OA criteria for journals developed by members of the DIAMAS and CRAFT-OA projects.
With this in mind, CRAFT-OA initiated a dedicated task focused on DOAJ journal verification aimed at several objectives. First, we sought to test the six operational Diamond OA journal criteria. Next, we worked on improving verification guidelines to ensure clear and consistent instructions. Additionally, compiling frequently asked questions helped in providing transparent support. This task also allowed us to gather crucial initial data for the Diamond Discovery Hub itself, forming a solid base for ongoing development. Beyond data collection, this initiative played a vital community-building role by bringing together European Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSP) and Institutional Publishing Technology Providers (IPTP) to support Diamond OA journals through the DDH. Finally, our collaboration provided feedback and assistance to DOAJ in updating and maintaining accurate journal information.
The verification task started by identifying which criteria are shared between DOAJ and the DDH. We found that four of the six criteria are common to both: Persistent Identification, Scholarly Journal, No Author Fees, and Open Access with open licenses. The remaining two criteria, Open to all Authors and Community Ownership, required verification. During this process, we also noticed that some of the DOAJ data for the four criteria we have in common was outdated and supported DOAJ to update their records.
Next, we imported DOAJ’s data and extracted records for European journals. To determine which journals to include, we used the country classification from the DIAMAS project2, which distinguishes between ERA member countries, ERAC observers, and countries associated with Horizon Europe. We decided to include journals from all three categories within the DDH. For each country, we reached out to individuals within the institutional publishing OA sector, inviting them to assist with the verification task. Representatives from seventeen countries took on the responsibility of verifying a total of 2,984 journals. Most of these journals were confirmed to be Diamond OA journals, resulting in 2,469 verified Diamond journals (Image 1). These 2,469 journals will be available on the DDH website at the end of June 2025 (beta launch).
Following the verification, several rounds of discussions took place to resolve ambiguous cases and to develop a set of frequently asked questions (FAQ). These discussions helped clarify the application of the Diamond criteria. The country representatives now form the group of DDH editors. Editors have a specific user role within the DDH system and are responsible for maintaining the metadata of the records they verified. This group will continue to act as experts on Diamond criteria. To support their work, we set up a mailing list and a group on the EDCH forum for further discussions and exchange.
Looking ahead, once the DDH is fully launched, it will receive journal data from trusted sources. Trusted data sources will primarily be institutional publishers that agree to the terms of service of DDH, verify their data against the six operational Diamond criteria and send it to DDH. The DDH editors will support trusted data sources in handling complex cases and provide guidance on interpreting the Diamond criteria, primarily through the forum. Additionally, the DDH editors can verify data from other data providers, which are not trusted sources of DDH.
By utilizing existing infrastructures, following established standards, and encouraging collaboration within the community, the Diamond Discovery Hub is working to build a foundation for improving the landscape of Diamond Open Access publishing in Europe, supporting the principles of openness, equity, and high-quality scholarly communication.
“Diamond Open Access (OA) is 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.” (diamas.org)
- As of 20.05.2025 ↩︎
- Bargheer, M., Bosman, J., Drahomira, C., Frantsvåg, J. E., Klaus, T., Kramer, B., Laakso, M., Manista, F., Melinščak Zlodi, I., Peruginelli, G., Proudman, V., Rooryck, J., Souyioultzoglou, I., Stojanovski, J., Stone, G., & Verheusen, A. (2023). D2.1 IPSP Scoping Report_approved by the EC. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10406373
↩︎
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.