Enhancing Diamond Open Access

How OS-APS Facilitates Media-Neutral Scholarly Publishing

Abstract

Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR) presented an action plan in 2022 to establish an "equitable, community-driven, academic-led and -owned" publication infrastructure, marking a significant step in developing the Open Diamond publication model. Despite over 30,000 Diamond OA journals worldwide, challenges persist, including funding, long-term quality assurance, sustainable publication workflows, and scalability options (Action Plan for Diamond Open Access).

The Open Source Academic Publishing Suite (OS-APS) addresses these challenges, promoting sustainable Diamond OA publications. This open-source application supports a single-source workflow for media-neutral publishing, accommodating formats like PDF, HTML and JATS-XML, and integrates with platforms such as OJS, OMP and DSpace. OS-APS includes Pandoc for DOCX import and uses community-shared open source templates, requiring minimal technical expertise. This enables small and medium-sized publishers to produce scholarly articles and journals efficiently, enhancing the OA Diamond model‘s viability.

OS-APS‘s open-source nature and user-driven development culture allow extensive customization through open source code development. The Specialized Information Service for Philosophy, the official test user, has utilized OS-APS for media-neutral publication of various OA journals, including the "2nd Philosophical Symposia of the DFG." A comparison between the media-neutral 2nd Symposia and the traditionally published 1st Symposia shows a significant increase in article visibility due to more flexible usage options. The access rates of the 2nd Symposia articles more than doubled in a short time compared to the 1st Symposia and additionally, a shift in users reading habits can be noted.

OS-APS can be pivotal in establishing Diamond OA as a sustainable publication model, promoting FAIR principles, democratizing knowledge and strengthening an independent scientific sector.

In our workshop, we will provide a comprehensive insight into the practical use of OS-APS, offering an overview of the project and its goals, ensuring participants understand the necessary details and context. The second part will be a practical session, covering the entire application process from Docker installation to article publication in Open Journal Systems (OJS), designed for both experienced software developers and people with little technical know how. In this way, participants should be able to set up their own OS-APS instance in order to be able to use the advantages of the software independently.