The DIAMAS (Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication) project has published a report investigating the financial sustainability of institutional publishers and service providers. EIFL is a partner in the DIAMAS project, and Milica Ševkušić, Project Coordinator for the EIFL Open Access Programme, is one of the contributors to the report.

The report draws on the results of extensive research conducted across 18 months including a literature review of economic and financial aspects of institutional publishing, quantitative surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Ten EIFL partner countries (Albania, Estonia, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine) took part in the survey and one (Serbia) was also involved in focus groups.

The report shows that although institutional publishers and service providers are diverse – in terms of their missions, sizes, services they provide and tasks they perform, access to funding options and the choices they make – they face similar challenges, such as the need for more financial resources, the lack of stability and permanence in personnel and the dependence on parent organizations. Along with public national or regional funders, parent organizations, which provide significant in-kind support (personnel, services), are the main local supporters of Diamond open access (OA). 

The report reveals a clear need for stable and long-term funding that entails less administration, and the crucial role of large infrastructures, such as Diamond OA hosting platforms, and open source software. It particularly highlights the need to fund both national and international infrastructures used by many small to medium-size institutional publishers and service providers.

• A summary of the findings and recommendations can be found in the DIAMAS blog  and a factsheet published on the DIAMAS website,
• Read the full report: https://zenodo.org/records/10907086