"Diamond Thinking" Project Introducing Donau4KIT: A collaborative initiative for Promoting and Supporting Diamond OA Journals

Developed as a part of the Diamond-Thinking Initiative at Karlsruhe (Germany), Donau4KIT is a two-year research project that started in September 2023 with BMBF Funding. Ever since its proposal stage, the project has been a collaboration between universities (Karlsruhe and Stuttgart Libraries) and with journal hosting bodies (Ubiquity Press). This is an explorative pilot project, which situates libraries as proactive actors.

Recent studies on the situation of the open access journals in Switzerland (Hahn et al. 2023) and Germany (Taubert, Sterzik, and Bruns 2023) have shown that financial uncertainty and overburdening of academic volunteers, working in journal processing and management, are the two main challenges hindering the sustainability of any diamond OA journal. Therefore, development of alternate models of financing the publication process and reduction of burden of labour through automatization are the two key strategic solutions. With this project, the KIT-Bibliothek takes initiatives to provide support infrastructure, both technical and financial, to scholars in developing and sustaining diamond model of open access journals. ... mehrThe support is offered through various partnerships with other organisations and institutions.Donau4KIT project at KIT- Bibliothek also aims not only to develop theoretical models via market research, such as surveys of the current demands of market, but to also test the success of those models in promotion of diamond OA journals. The models will facilitate the foundation of new journals as well as the smooth transition of existing pay-to-publish and pay-to-read journals into diamond OA journals.

With the Donau4KIT, we aim towards a more author-, researcher-, and reader-friendly ecosystem of open access journals. Our understanding is that for a sustainable ecosystem, a partnership between multiple actors, such as authors, researchers, publishers, data-hosting institutions, and libraries is vital. At the conference in April 2024, we would like to share the results of our endeavours during the first six months of our project.