European Commission to fund large open-access project CRAFT-OA with participation of TIB
As part of the HORIZON Europe framework programme, the European Commission is funding a three-year project to strengthen the landscape of institutional publishing. In this field, a particular focus is on so-called „Diamond Open Access“, Open Access publishing without payments by readers or authors. The TIB is one of the participating organisations and, with this project, is linking up with some of its current focal points in the OA field.
The project „Creating a Robust Accessible Federated Technology for Open Access“ (CRAFT-OA) is carried out by 23 experienced institutions from 14 European countries (see project press release) and coordinated by the University of Göttingen. It will run for three years from January 1st, 2023 and is funded under the topic „Improving and coordinating technical infrastructure for institutional open access publishing across Europe“ of the call „Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (2022)“.
The project focuses on providing support for all (technical) aspects of publishing scientific journals by academic institutions. In this way, corresponding offerings can be professionalised and act even better as an alternative to commercial offerings. At the same time, their journals and platforms can achieve greater visibility and usability through integration with other platforms. Many of the institutional publication offerings are so-called „diamond open access“ journals, i.e. journals where neither the readers (as with classic subscription journals) nor the authors (as with many commercial open access journals) have to pay for the articles. Many of these diamond open access journals need support to meet current standards (see, for example, the OA Diamond Journals Study (Bosman et al. 2021) or Few Open Access Journals Are Compliant with Plan S (Frantsvåg/Strømme 2019)).
The press release of the project shows the main lines of action and the partners involved. TIB is a relevant partner in this project and will be involved in two areas of work in particular: Together with other experienced partners, we will develop new functionalities for the software Open Journal Systems, which is used many thousands of times and which we also use for our own publication service TIB Open Publishing. Other similar publishing tools will also benefit from interfaces and transparent documentation and free publication of the code. In addition, we will focus on training measures on technical standards of (open access) publishing.
We are looking forward to working together on the project and, above all, to the added value for good open access models that we will develop together.
For TIB, the commitment to good and sustainable open access models has a long tradition. APC-free models are an important building block here. Under the label KOALA, TIB operates consortia for the joint funding of diamond open access journals; the library itself regularly participates in the funding of open access journals such as QSS or SciPost and in the funding of relevant open access infrastructure. With its publishing house TIB Open Publishing, TIB operates a service for professional open access publishing of conference proceedings and journals. Current standards play a major role in this – just as they do in the CRAFT-OA project that is now starting. To support our publishing activities and as part of our partnership with PKP, we actively develop software around OJS. With the signing of the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access a few months ago, TIB documented its will to further strengthen this important field for the transition to open access.
The EU project will carry out public relations work and directly address and involve the communities. Through the project and directly – we are always happy to exchange ideas on the topics mentioned.
... leitet den Bereich Publikationsdienste der TIB und koordiniert deren Open-Access-Aktivitäten.
... arbeitet im Bereich Publikationsdienste und betreut dort die Open-Access-Publikationsplattform TIB Open Publishing.
arbeitet im Bereich der Publikationsdienste und betreut die Open-Access-Platform TIB-Open-Publishing
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