Diamond Open Access
What is diamond open access?
Diamond open access means permanent and free access to published scientific works for readers and no publication fees for the authors – it is 100% free. All articles are published under the most flexible reuse standard – the CC BY license.
Authors are not charged article processing fees or publication fees – no fees whatsoever. Importantly, authors retain copyright of their work and allow it to be shared and reused, provided that it is correctly cited.
Readers anywhere in the world may download, share or use the work, free of charge.
Besides diamond open access, there is the gold open access model, where the author pays a fee (article processing charge – APC) to the publisher to cover production costs, and the copyright holder (usually the author) grants readers permanent and royalty-free access to the final version of the published article. Unfortunately, some publishers place limits on the reuse of the articles, restrict text and data mining, hold the copyright (or only transfer it upon additional payment), and even adopt the practice of allowing only “temporary open access”.
Another open access model is the green or self-archiving model. Here the author deposits a version (usually a pre-production version) of the article in a freely accessible repository. Which version of the article is allowed to be deposited and whether there is an embargo period depends on the policies of the publisher.
Who funds this?
All publication costs for articles in the Beilstein Journals are completely funded by the Beilstein-Institut, an independent, non-profit foundation based in Germany.
The Beilstein-Institut supports the advancement of scientific communication and information exchange, driven by the belief that scientific knowledge is a social good and should be available to everyone without barriers. The diamond open access platform of the Beilstein Journals maximizes the potential for exchanging ideas and provides a valuable contribution to those with limited financial means by leveling the playing field and giving everyone an equal chance to publish and read scientific publications of high quality. To induce the transformation of scholarly journals from subscription to open access publishing, the Beilstein-Institut supports the international initiative Open Access 2020.
The Beilstein-Institut cooperates with other nonprofit organizations and initiatives to promote nonprofit scholarly publishing – see Community.
