EIFL is one of several international partners that have come together to form ALMASI, a project that aims to provide the research community with an aligned, nonprofit, high-quality, and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem spanning three world regions: Africa, Europe and Latin America. 

ALMASI, short for Aligning and Mutualizing Nonprofit Open Access Publishing Services Internationally, will enable scholarly communities to take full responsibility for innovative, valid, reliable and accessible Diamond open access publishing services. Diamond open access refers to an open access publishing model that does not charge any fees for readers or authors. 

The project will take into account specific needs across the diversity of disciplines, global regions, and languages. To achieve this, the ALMASI partners will focus on  measures that will harmonise and strengthen existing nonprofit publishing services.

ALMASI will establish a framework for knowledge transfer, coordination, and alignment of non-technological publishing skills and services, focusing on (1) mapping nonprofit publishing services  across the 3 regions; (2) aligned quality support instruments for publishing services; (3) shared training materials and curricula for publishing services, journal editors, and publishing staff; and (4) long-term financial sustainability and open science policies for scholarly publishing. 

ALMASI is funded by the EU. The project will be carried out in the context of the Global Diamond Open Access Alliance, which is supported by UNESCO and was launched at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, in July 2024.

Partners

AJOL – African Journals Online; CNRS - National Centre for Scientific Research; DOAB - Directory of Open Access Books, DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals; EIFL; ESF - European Science Foundation; FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology; OASPA – Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association ; OPERAS; PKP - Public Knowledge Project; Redalyc - Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal; SPARC Europe; SPE – Society of Petroleum Engineers; TSV - Federation of Finnish Learned Societies; UGOE - The University of Goettingen; UL – University of Limerick. 

Timeline

January 2025 - December 2028

Activities

With partners, EIFL will co-lead and / or participate in the following activities:

• Mapping of nonprofit open access publishing services  in Africa, Europe and Latin America;
• Assessing the quality and alignment of nonprofit publishing services in the three regions;
• Enhancing skills and competences for nonprofit scholarly publishing and Diamond OA Publishing in the three regions;
• Exploring and supporting sustainability through policy and funding (EIFL co-leads this with SPARC Europe);
• Communicating and disseminating the outputs of the ALMASI project to stakeholders.