The project The socioeconomics of scientific publication of the French Committee for Open Science has published a study on Diamond open access journals business models.

The aim of this study is to test the feasibility, and also the desirability, of a direct, recurrent funding model for Diamond open access journals, the examples of have been very scarce up to now. It is a follow up on the  OA Diamond Journals survey and, in particular, on its recommendation to set up a direct funding for Diamond open access journals from institutions that do not currently support them.

The study is based on a questionnaire survey of over 1,000 journals, to which 260 responded. The questions covered four themes aiming at understanding their financial situation: the journal’s economic configuration, publishing acts, relationship with funders and reporting, and their opinion on a direct funding model.

The final report presents the results by proposing four models for Diamond open access journals direct support, highlighting the parts of the publication process that could be directly funded (after identifying the various players), and specifying the technical conditions for implementing a direct funding model. The report also identifies the advantages and limitations of such models.