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Public launch of the European Diamond Capacity Hub and the ALMASI Project

29/10/2024

The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) will hold its public launch on 15 January 2025 in Madrid, Spain. The event will be hosted by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), and it will take place at the Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (MUNCYT). At the event, key features of the EDCH will be presented, along with a range of opportunities for active participation and collaboration.

About the European Diamond Capacity Hub

The EDCH aims to strengthen the Diamond OA community in Europe by supporting European institutional, national and disciplinary capacity centres and Diamond publishers and service providers in their mission of Diamond OA scholarly publishing. The EDCH will provide these Diamond stakeholders with coordination, sustainability, training modules, technical tools, and services at scale. The EDCH thus answers the need for capacity building in the Diamond OA community that was expressed in the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access.

The EDCH takes its place alongside other regional Diamond OA capacity hubs worldwide, like Redalyc–Amelica or AJOL, and hopes to inspire other regions to support the idea of a global framework for  Diamond OA that UNESCO is currently exploring through a consultation process. 

There has been a marked increase in political support for Diamond Open Access. The Council of the European Union Conclusions of May 2023 reflect a consensus between EU Member States to move towards ‘high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing’, while the Council Conclusions of June 2022 connected open science with research assessment reform. The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science of November 2021 reflects a similar consensus at the global level.

The initial components of the EDCH were developed within the frameworks of the EC-funded CRAFT-OA and the DIAMAS projects. The EDCH has received initial financial support from the French National Research Agency (ANR) and the CNRS.

By hosting the EDCH, OPERAS continues its mission to promote open scholarly communication and equitable publishing models across the European Research Area, advancing efforts to make Open Science a reality.

About the ALMASI project

The EDCH will be launched in conjunction with a public event on 14 January 2025 announcing the EU-funded ALMASI project (Aligning and Mutualizing Nonprofit Open Access Publishing Services Internationally). The ALMASI project seeks to develop a nonprofit, high-quality, and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem spanning three regions: Africa, Europe, and Latin America. This three-year initiative, starting in January 2025, involving 15 partners from across three continents, will work towards:

  • Understanding the current landscape of nonprofit OA publishing in the three regions.
  • Co-designing and aligning measures for quality standards, training resources, and institutional and national policy development.

The ALMASI project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101188192. More about the project: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101188192

Event programme & registration

The detailed programme of the launch event for both the ALMASI project and the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) is available here: Public Launch of the ALMASI EU funded Project and the European Diamond Capacity Hub – OPERAS. The event will be held in English.

The events are open to a broad audience, including decision makers, academic publishers, editors, service providers, librarians, research community members, and anyone interested in Diamond Open Access. While attendance is in-person, introductory parts of each day will be streamed live on YouTube.

Registration remains open until 12 December 2024, with options to attend either one or both launch events, via this form. There is no registration fee for attendance.

Contacts

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