The Diamond OA conversation in 2026 is increasingly framed as a new direction for global scholarly publishing. From a Latin American perspective, this framing is roughly two decades late. SciELO, launched in Brazil in 1998, Latindex operating since 1995, Redalyc from 2003, and AmeliCA consolidating the regional infrastructure from 2018 — together these have operated a working Diamond OA ecosystem at regional scale for a quarter-century. This post looks at what the rest of the world is finally learning from this experience.
The Latin American model
The Latin American scholarly-communication model emerged from a different starting position than the Anglo-American one. Subscription publishing never dominated; commercial publisher penetration was limited; learned societies, universities, and national research councils operated journals as a public-good function. When the open-access conversation arrived in the 2000s, the question for Latin America was not how to flip a subscription system to OA but how to strengthen and federate the already-open infrastructure.
SciELO emerged from FAPESP (the São Paulo research funder) and BIREME (the regional Pan American Health Organisation library) as a quality-controlled regional federation of journals with shared technical infrastructure, peer-review standards, and indexing. Latindex emerged from UNAM as a regional catalogue of scholarly journals with quality criteria. Redalyc emerged from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México as a full-text repository of Latin American journals. AmeliCA, launched in 2018, federated the three with explicit Diamond-OA positioning.
The model is community-led, publicly funded, multilingual (Spanish, Portuguese, English, with growing Indigenous-language presence), and operates without article-processing charges. It indexes thousands of journals; the federated catalogue holds over a million articles; the technical infrastructure (XML production, DOI registration, COUNTER-compliant usage statistics) meets international standards.
What worked, and why
Three structural features explain the model’s durability.
First, institutional anchoring. SciELO, Latindex, Redalyc, and AmeliCA are each hosted by major research institutions (FAPESP, UNAM, UAEM) with stable funding. The infrastructure is not project-grant-dependent; it is institutionally sustained. This is the contrast with the European Diamond OA conversation, which has struggled with project-grant precarity, and one of the lessons that the 2024 Plan Diamond declaration explicitly acknowledged.
Second, quality through federation. The journal-level quality criteria (Latindex’s catalogue criteria, SciELO’s collection criteria) are operated as community-standards bodies, not as gatekeepers. A journal that meets the criteria is indexed; the criteria are public; appeals are possible. The federated catalogue is the quality signal; reputation is built through inclusion rather than through individual journal brand.
Third, technical infrastructure shared at scale. The SciELO publishing infrastructure (XML production, web hosting, DOI registration) is offered as a service to participating journals. Journals do not each reinvent the technical layer. This reduces per-journal cost dramatically and is the model that the European Diamond OA capacity centre is now trying to replicate.
What the global North is learning
Three lessons are being absorbed, slowly.
First, institutional funding is the sustainable model. APC-based gold OA reproduces commercial publishing’s economics; transformative agreements concentrate funding in well-resourced consortia; Diamond OA funded by institutions is the cost-effective alternative for the scholarly-communication public good. The OPERAS network in Europe, the cOAlition S 2024 strategic refresh, and the MIT Framework on principles for scholarly communication all explicitly endorse institutional funding for OA infrastructure.
Second, bibliodiversity is a feature, not a bug. The Latin American model publishes in multiple languages, with regional editorial leadership, addressing regional research priorities. The dominant-language, Global-North-centred model that emerged from the subscription era is a historical accident, not a quality standard. The bibliodiversity framing from the Jussieu Call (2018), the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication (2019), and the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (2021) all draw on the Latin American experience.
Third, regional infrastructure is legitimate research infrastructure. The bibliometric assessment patterns that treated SciELO and similar venues as second-tier indexing did so on assumptions (Web of Science and Scopus as global standards) that are themselves historically and geographically specific. The 2024 Helsinki Initiative implementation guidance and the CoARA reform agenda push assessment systems to recognise regional infrastructure on its own terms.
What still needs work
The Latin American model is not without its tensions. Three deserve mention.
First, discoverability beyond the region. SciELO is indexed in major international databases; Latindex and AmeliCA less so. Articles published in regional Diamond OA venues are findable to those who know to look there; less findable to those defaulting to Web of Science or Scopus. The integration with Crossref and DataCite has improved this, but the discovery-default question remains.
Second, discipline coverage. The Latin American Diamond OA ecosystem is stronger in humanities, social sciences, and applied health than in laboratory natural sciences and engineering, where researchers under bibliometric pressure publish externally. The model needs reinforcement in disciplines where it is currently thinner.
Third, language equity within the region. Indigenous-language and Portuguese publication is growing but is still well behind Spanish. The 2024 AmeliCA strategic refresh prioritises multilingual expansion.
What CASRAI recommends
For Global North funders and institutions considering Diamond OA investment, the operating advice is to learn from the Latin American experience and to support, where possible, integration with the existing regional infrastructure rather than build parallel structures. The 2024 Plan Diamond signatory commitments include several explicit channels for funding regional infrastructure; the CASRAI Diamond OA funder guide walks through the options.
For institutions evaluating their researchers’ contributions, the operating advice is to recognise publication in regional Diamond OA venues on the same terms as publication in international venues. This requires updating bibliometric tools to include the regional indices, updating promotion-and-tenure committees’ reading lists, and treating responsible assessment commitments seriously rather than performatively.
For researchers, the operating advice is to publish where the work fits the venue, not where the bibliometric pressure points. A regional-language paper in a SciELO or Redalyc journal is a legitimate scholarly output and should be claimed and cited as such. The CASRAI bibliodiversity for authors guide discusses the practicalities.
The longer arc
The next ten years of scholarly publishing will be shaped by whether the global system absorbs the Latin American lessons or continues to treat them as regional exceptions. The signs are tentatively positive. cOAlition S’s strategic refresh, the OPERAS work in Europe, the institutional re-investment as transformative agreements expire — all point toward a less commercial, less APC-centred, more bibliodiverse system. The infrastructure to operate that system already exists in Latin America; the rest of the world is catching up.
