This EIFL toolkit is a practical working companion for the editors, editorial teams and host-institution colleagues who run African Diamond open access (OA) journals, and for the librarians, faculty advocates and institutional actors who support them. 

Its focus is the financial dimension of sustainability planning: how to set out what the journal costs to run, including the unpaid time that editors and reviewers give; where the resources will come from; and how to make the case to those who can support you over the next three years. 

Diamond OA journals do not charge fees for authors or readers. The toolkit turns good practice in Diamond OA financial sustainability into practical questions and includes a credibility checklist, a template structure for a strategy and a straightforward format for setting out an action plan format. 

Journals can use these tools to build a comprehensive, credible three-year sustainability plan for parent institutions, funders and their own editorial communities. The toolkit helps journals check that the plan is complete, well-evidenced and convincing to the people who will read it. 

The toolkit comes with a simple spreadsheet template for projecting costs and funding over three years, and a fully worked example for a fictional journal. 

EIFL commissioned Rob Johnson of Research Consulting to develop the toolkit within the framework of the three-year ‘Collaboration for Sustainable Open Access Publishing in Africa’ project, implemented by EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online) and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network), with funding from Wellcome. Through the project, EIFL awarded grants to 33 projects aiming to strengthen Diamond OA journals. Input from EIFL and EIFL grantees helped to ensure that the toolkit reflects the needs and experiences of the journals and publishing communities it aims to support. Although developed in the context of Africa, the toolkit can be used by journals and publishing organizations worldwide.

How to cite the toolkit: Johnson, R. (2026). EIFL - Financial sustainability planning toolkit for Diamond Open Access journals. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23728622