Diamond open access

The university will support parties that do not charge open access costs to authors or readers of publications (diamond open access). These publications do not only consist of journals and platforms, but also relate to the (open) infrastructure on which they are dependent.

Supporting diamond open access initiatives is in line with the open access policy of Utrecht University. This means that the university wants to make it easier for researchers to publish open access while at the same time considering a responsible spending of public money.

Funding open access services

Currently the library is already funding major open access services, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals and the Directory of Open Access Books.

Various parties publish open access journals and books without charging costs to authors and in doing so they are dependent on financial support from academic institutions. A first step Utrecht University Library takes in supporting these initiatives is entering into so-called Subscribe to Open (S2O) agreements.

Subscribe to Open: from subscriber to donor

Entering into Subscribe to Open (S2O) deals is a way in which the library can support existing journals in the transition to a diamond open access model. In S2O deals publishers make existing journals fully open access without charging costs to the authors. In order to make this possible libraries must promise to keep paying the same subscription fees as before. The library changes as it were from subscriber to donor.

The library is currently supporting four Subscribe to Open initiatives:

Do you want to find out more?

Further information about diamond open access: