Funding

The majority of the respondents (91; 45.7%) have institutional funding provided either through permanent (49; 24.6%) or periodically negotiated subsidies (21.1%) from the journal’s primary institution. For a significant number of journals institutional subsidies are the only funding source. Those relying solely on permanent subsidies provided by the journal’s primary institution account for 25% (35 journals) of the total sample, while 21.43% (30 journals) receive only periodically negotiated institutional subsidies.

Table 2. Funding sources

Other sources of funding mentioned by respondents include (in alphabetical order):

• Advertising, although not always reliable: “At the initial stage the journal was mainly relying on advertisements from pharmaceutical companies, but this has now dwindled down and is no longer a reliable source of income. The journal would do with reliable financial support as currently it is entirely supported by the two associations, and they are getting overstretched as the journal is not their core business.”
• Events: “Book launch during annual conferences of the Society”
• Departmental funding
• Donations: e.g. “research project donation” / “goodwill donations from colleagues or Associations” / “volunteer donations”
• Support provided from another journal that charges publication fees
• Grants
• Membership support
• Optional publication fee
• Personal money: “Chief Editor's own pocket funding” / “personal research funds” / “personal research funds from Advisory and Editorial board or other members”
• Print on demand
• Seed funding for the initial volume
• Sponsorship
• Training earnings: “The Journal is produced by the Think tank of the University. Being the Think tank of the University as well as for the country, there are efforts to sustain the Journal through partnership with key security players in the country and regionally. The Think tank conducts research and paid short courses and sensitization workshops. Part of the earnings of the training go towards the production of the journal.”
• Support from the partners: e.g. African Journals Partnership (AJPP), through a once-off grant from KU Select secured by a publisher.

Sustainability

Almost equal shares of respondents see their funding sources as stable or very stable (40.1%) and unstable or very unstable (39.2%) in the last three years.

Table 3. The stability of funding sources

Unstable funding offers a risk of switching a journal’s business model from Diamond OA to a fee-based publishing model: “Unstable funding sources. We plan to charge a submission fee as soon as the journal is indexed in Medline/Pubmed.”

The majority (149; 74.9%) of those who consider their funding sources stable do not rely on permanent institutional subsidies. The majority (38 of 49) of those who have access to this type of funding consider their funding sources either stable or very stable, which, expectedly, is not the case with other funding sources.

The majority of journals (71.4%) don’t have an annual approved budget.

Table 4. The presence of an annual approved budget

The majority of the respondents (113; 56.8%) have a journal sustainability plan.

Table 5. The presence of a sustainability plan

Institutional in-kind support

Journal host organizations provide in-kind support either in the form of general IT services, facility costs, publishing platforms, websites and other tools, labour, etc. The most common types of support include general IT services (used by 52.3% respondents), service-specific IT services (45.7%) and the ability to use facilities and premises of the host organization (45.7%). The majority of journals (57.8%) rely on multiple forms of support provided by the host organization, while 7% report no support. If a journal relies on only one form of institutional support, it most commonly belongs to one of these categories.

Table 6. The reliance on institutional in-kind support

Other types of in-kind support include

• Additional pay as incentive for journal chief editor, deputies, editors and associate editors
• Donors, grants, quality management assistance
• Plagiarism checking services
• Stipends

Incentives

Almost one quarter of the respondents have incentives for journal’s personnel at their institutions.

Table 7. Incentives for journal’s personnel

Types of incentives in place include (in alphabetical order):

• Additional points at evaluation/promotion: “It is an extended professional contribution of the University Regular Staff which will have the weightage for promotion” / “Certificates, which are counted during staff promotion” / “For academic promotion” / “Points for promotion as service” / “It gives the personnel at least 1 point under Academic leadership qualities, for promotion” / “Reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief are awarded scores during the annual personnel evaluation for career progression” / “Incentives in performance evaluation” / “Journal editing seen to contribute to reputation of the institution and counts towards promotion and performance evaluation” / “certificate of completing the required two years’ service will be considered for academic promotion” / “the editors' and associates' contributions will be considered for promotion”
• Allowances: “An allowance is given after publishing an issue” / “Limited amount as allowance”
• Bonuses: “A three-monthly bonus”
• Collaboration opportunities: “Collaboration as Editorial Board members”
• Honoraria: “Payment of honorarium and special recognition”
• Internet package, data charges: “Some amount of money are given to cover data charges”
• Less other institutional administrative work
• Monetary: “~ 23 USD per month for editors to manage the journal activity by the Ministry of Education” / “up to USD 24 per person per month” / “monthly stipend” / “monthly payment” / “monthly pay” / “small pocket money is paid only for editorial members from university” / “the managing director works for a full-time salary” / “the journal managing editor and secretary is employed and paid a monthly salary” / “there is a small topup for personnels working in the management of the journal”
• Moral incentives
• Recognition/ recommendations
• Reduction in regular working hours
• Teaching load consideration
• Tokens of appreciation: “A small token of appreciation once an issue of a journal is published”
• Visibility: “Both the staff and reviewers are given a chance to publish their profiles on the website. Additionally, authors also have their profiles on the website.”

Collaborations among Diamond OA journals

More than three quarters of the respondents (77.4%) would consider collaborating with other organizations in one or more areas mentioned in the survey. Those who would not collaborate in any of these areas account for 17.1%, while 5.5% said they didn’t know.

Figure 5. The willingness of journals to collaborate

Most journals would collaborate on training, support and/or advice on publishing policies and best practice (115, 57.8%); IT services (108; 54.3%), production (103; 51.8%), communication (95; 47.7%) and editorial services (90; 45.2%), while only 20% are interested in collaboration relating to administrative, legal and financial services.

Table 8. Potential collaboration areas