Better Together: How Funding and Quality Certification Empower Public Infrastructures for Diamond Open Access

Abstract

(Watch the RECORDING.)

The transformation of research communication and access systems toward open, equitable, and sustainable models requires robust public policies based on a fine-grained articulation of public resources to strength digital infrastructures. Political support, funding streams, legal frameworks, enforcement mechanisms, infrastructures, human resources, time, consensus, and organizational capacity are the key instruments for effective grass routed open science policies. This proposal examines the role of National public policies in advancing Diamond OA, focusing on two main policy instruments: dedicated public funding streams and public based quality certification services for journals, Diamond institutional publishers and publishing platforms, and OA repositories. The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), under the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, issues these services since 2020 and 2007 respectively.

National funding calls for open science in Spain have been dedicated to support the technical development of these three digital infrastructures. Two funding calls were issued in 2020 and 2023, providing 1.09 million € and 3 million € in support, respectively. Up to 92 proposals were funded out of 169 submissions. The presentation will highlight key challenges in the design of the call, the participatory mechanisms used to engage with the publishers and the librarian’s community, and the main outcomes of funded projects. Through ex post analysis, both expected and unexpected impacts are evaluated, offering insights into effective public policy design.

Besides, public based quality certification instruments for digital infrastructures in the context of open science are grounded in the principle that quality should be treated as a public good, collectively defined, transparently governed, and equitably accessible. In Spain, these instruments aim to challenge and ultimately replace the dominant influence of commercial service providers, whose metrics and proprietary standards have often imposed toxic and unsustainable frameworks on research and development (R&D) assessment processes. FECYT issues quality certification services for national scholarly journals and for OA repositories since 2007, and for Diamond OA institutional publishers since 2004. The presentation will show that there is still a notable gap between the high level of acceptance these services enjoy among the library and Diamond publishing communities, and their slower progression in gaining the same level of prestige typically associated with commercially based assessment frameworks. 

By sharing Spain’s experience, this presentation aims to offer a replicable model for how national agencies can design effective public policies for open science infrastructures. This presentation is also an invitation to dialogue on how policy, funding, and technical coordination can jointly advance the global transition to open, inclusive, and community-driven science.