The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access is a 2022 coordination framework — not a funding programme in itself — through which Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and France’s National Research Agency (ANR) agreed to make community-run, no-fee journals and platforms more efficient, higher-quality and sustainable. Actual money moves through affiliated projects, a 2024 shift in cOAlition S funder strategy, and commitments made at the Global Summits on Diamond Open Access.
Diamond Open Access is a scholarly publishing model in which journals and platforms charge no fees to either authors or readers, with running costs instead covered collectively by institutions, funders, learned societies or consortia.
- What is the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access?
- What does the Action Plan actually fund?
- How do the Global Summits on Diamond Open Access fit together?
- Where is cOAlition S’s funding pledge actually going?
- What role does the Alliance of Diamond Open Access Journals play?
- Common questions about the Action Plan
- What this means for institutions, funders and publishers
What Is the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access?
The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access was published on 2 March 2022 by Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and the French National Research Agency (ANR), drawing directly on the 2021 OA Diamond Journals Study the same funders had commissioned the year before.
That study estimated between 17,000 and 29,000 Diamond OA journals worldwide, accounting for roughly 9% of total article output and 45% of all open-access volume — evidence of a large, fragmented sector needing coordination, not a marginal experiment.
The Action Plan itself organises its work around four priority areas:
- Efficiency — shared technical infrastructure and reduced duplication across journals and platforms
- Quality standards — common editorial, peer-review and publishing-ethics benchmarks
- Capacity building — training and technical support for small, often volunteer-run editorial teams
- Sustainability — long-term funding and governance models that do not depend on author or reader fees
More than 40 organisations endorsed the plan at launch, and endorsement has continued to grow through Science Europe’s public endorsement register.
What Does the Action Plan Actually Fund?
The Action Plan is a strategic framework, not a grant scheme — it does not hold or distribute a central pot of money. Its four priorities are instead operationalised through separate, funded projects that member organisations run or co-finance.
The clearest example is DIAMAS (Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly communication), funded under the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, which maps the Diamond OA landscape and develops shared quality and capacity standards. A second outcome is the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH), backed by ANR and France’s CNRS, giving European Diamond OA journals and platforms a shared point of technical and editorial support.
The Action Plan does not substitute for a journal’s own funding: individual Diamond OA titles still rely on their host institution, society, consortium or national agency to cover running costs. Its role is to make that patchwork more efficient and interoperable, not to replace it.
How Do the Global Summits on Diamond Open Access Fit Together?
Since 2023, the Action Plan’s priorities have been reviewed and extended at a recurring series of Global Summits, bringing in funders, publishers, librarians and researchers beyond the plan’s original European signatories.
| Summit | Date | Location | Key outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Global Summit | 23–27 October 2023 | Toluca, Mexico | Founding declaration widening Diamond OA governance beyond Europe |
| 2nd Global Summit | 11–13 December 2024 | Cape Town, South Africa | Regional priorities for the Global South formally incorporated |
| 3rd Global Summit | 2–6 February 2026 | Bengaluru, India | Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access |
| 4th Global Summit | 2027 (planned) | Bali, Indonesia | Scheduled review of Bengaluru Roadmap implementation |
The 3rd Global Summit, held in Bengaluru in February 2026, drew 347 participants from 36 countries and produced the Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access. It extends the original 2022 plan into five global priority areas: leadership for underrepresented researchers, community-owned infrastructures, linguistic diversity, sustainability and capacity building, and cross-regional collaboration.
Like its 2022 predecessor, the Bengaluru Roadmap is a coordination document, not a funding instrument: it asks governments, funders and universities to redirect existing publishing expenditure toward community-governed infrastructure, but does not itself hold or allocate that money.
Where Is cOAlition S’s Funding Pledge Actually Going?
cOAlition S — the group of research funders behind Plan S — is one of the Action Plan’s four founding signatories. As of 31 December 2024, cOAlition S no longer financially supports transformative agreements or transformative journals, the hybrid arrangements it had used to push subscription journals toward open access.
Under its published Strategy for 2026–2030, cOAlition S redirects that displaced funding toward “more sustainable and equitable” models, naming Diamond Open Access and preprints explicitly as priorities alongside continued article processing charge (APC) support where no alternative exists. In practice, member funders are expected to route institutional and consortial funds toward Diamond OA infrastructure — journals, platforms, hubs like EDCH — rather than publisher-negotiated transformative deals.
What has not yet been published, as of mid-2026, is a single ring-fenced cOAlition S grant line for Diamond OA comparable to the money previously committed to transformative agreements. The pledge is a strategic reallocation of existing member-funder budgets, decided funder-by-funder, not a new centralised fund.
What Role Does the Alliance of Diamond Open Access Journals Play?
The Alliance of Diamond Open Access Journals is listed as a current member organisation of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), representing a collective of no-fee journals operating under shared editorial and publishing standards. Its presence inside OASPA’s membership illustrates the second half of the Diamond OA ecosystem the Action Plan targets: journal-level, editor-led organisation, distinct from the funder-level coordination run by Science Europe, cOAlition S and OPERAS.
This distinction matters when working out who to contact about Diamond OA. Journal-level questions — editorial policy, publishing platforms, quality benchmarks for a specific title — sit with bodies like the Alliance and OASPA. Funder-strategy questions sit with Science Europe, cOAlition S and the Global Summit organising committees.
Common Questions About the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access
What is Diamond Open Access?
Diamond Open Access is a publishing model where journals and platforms charge no fees to authors or readers. Costs are instead covered collectively by institutions, funders, learned societies or consortia, distinguishing it from APC-funded “gold” open access and from subscription models.
Who created the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access?
The plan was jointly authored by Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and France’s ANR in March 2022, following consultation with participants at a February 2022 workshop and experts from Science Europe’s Open Science working group. More than 40 organisations endorsed it at launch.
Does the Action Plan directly fund individual journals?
No. The Action Plan is a strategic coordination framework, not a grant scheme. Money reaches individual journals and platforms through separate funded projects such as DIAMAS and the European Diamond Capacity Hub, or through their own host institutions, societies and national agencies.
How does the Bengaluru Roadmap differ from the 2022 Action Plan?
The Bengaluru Roadmap, produced at the 3rd Global Summit in February 2026, extends the 2022 plan’s four priorities into five global priority areas covering leadership, infrastructure, linguistic diversity, sustainability and cross-regional collaboration — widening the original European-led plan into a genuinely global framework.
What This Means for Institutions, Funders and Publishers
For research administrators, “Diamond OA funding” is not a single application window. Institutions should track three channels: national and EU project calls feeding infrastructure like DIAMAS, their funders’ post-2024 strategy documents (starting with cOAlition S’s Strategy for 2026–2030), and priorities set at the most recent Global Summit.
For publishers and journal editors, alignment with the Action Plan’s quality-standards priorities — and membership of bodies such as OASPA or the Alliance of Diamond Open Access Journals — increasingly determines eligibility for capacity-building support, rather than any single central fund.
The UNESCO-facilitated Global Diamond Open Access Alliance, announced on 10 July 2024 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and grounded in the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, adds a further, intergovernmental layer above the Action Plan and the Global Summits: it aligns national policy commitments rather than disbursing funding itself. Institutions under national open-science mandates should expect Diamond OA expectations to keep converging through the 4th Global Summit in Bali in 2027, even as funding itself continues moving through separate, uncoordinated channels rather than one pledge.
For broader context on how funder mandates and open-research requirements intersect with institutional research administration, see CASRAI’s overview of research administration standards and practice.
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