The “Diamond” Open Access Action Plan was announced during the European Open Science Days in Paris (OSEC), an event of PFUE, on February 4 and 5, 2022. Open access is a method long recommended by the CNRS to diversify the way publications are made.

For more than 20 years, CNRS has supported such good initiatives in favor of open access through innovations in journal platforms or digital tools for the certification and dissemination of scientific results. Let us cite publication portals such as the Open Edition for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Mersenne Center for Mathematics (recently expanded to other disciplines); Episciences platform for hosting innovative journals based on open archives; Peer Community In Platform, which publishes recommendations on preprints and articles based on assessments from scientific communities and has been directly supported by CNRS since last year.

These noble initiatives are undertaken by scientific communities and supported by CNRS in partnership with other research institutions.

In addition, CNRS makes a direct contribution to supporting the transformation of traditional magazines towards the Diamond model. An example is given by the “Subscribe to Open” business model, in which institutions are asked to commit to renewing their membership. As soon as a subscription limit is reached, magazines switch completely to “Diamond” open access. This is especially the case for the six mathematics journals of the Society for Applied and Industrial Mathematics (SMAI), published by EDP Sciences.

In the field of high-energy physics, the “Scope3” agreement, supported by CERN and funded by several research institutions including CNRS, has allowed all authors in this disciplinary field to read and publish for free for many years. whole world.

The action plan published on March 2 sheds light on this virtuous publication model. This would make it possible to offer open access publishing paths that are not based on payment of publication fees, such as open access platforms with mandatory publishing fees, which for the most part create cost problems and ethics. This is why CNRS wanted to show its support for the “Diamond” action plan as soon as it was published, according to its Open Science Roadmap.