ALMASI, a three-year EU-funded project involving 15 partners that aims to strengthen non-profit open access publishing across three regions - Africa, Latin America and Europe - has been launched in Madrid, Spain. 

EIFL is a partner in the ALMASI (Aligning and Mutualizing Nonprofit Open Access Publishing Services Internationally) project, and Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, and Milica Ševkušić, EIFL Open Access Programme Project Coordinator, participated in the project kick-off meeting and public launch.

The objective of ALMASI is to provide the research community with an aligned, non-profit, high-quality, and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem spanning Africa, Latin America and Europe. This will enable scholarly communities to take full responsibility for innovative, valid, reliable and accessible publishing services that do not charge fees to readers or authors, commonly known as Diamond Open Access. 

This aligned nonprofit publishing ecosystem will take into account specific needs of the three regions, and the diversity of languages and academic disciplines. 

The project will work towards understanding the current landscape of non-profit open access publishing in the three regions and co-designing and aligning measures for quality standards, training resources and institutional and national policy development. 

The kick-off meeting (13-14 January 2025) and public launch (14 January 2025) were hosted by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), and took place at the Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. 

The ALMASI project, which ends in 2028, is funded by the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.

More about the ALMASI project’s aims, activities and partners.