This guest blog post is written by Stefanie Westphal from the Max Weber Foundation. A German version of the post is available on the SeDOA website.
As part of the online event series This Is How We Do It: International Best Practices for Diamond Open Access, the OAPEN Foundation presented its work in support of Diamond Open Access. Under the title “OAPEN and DOAB: Supporting Diamond Open Access and Building Trust in a Global Ecosystem”, Graham Stone and Jordy Findanis introduced key infrastructures and recent developments in open scholarly book publishing on 17 April 2026. Sebastiano Sali, who had helped prepare the presentation, was unfortunately unable to attend in person.
Jordy Findanis began by introducing the OAPEN Foundation and three information and publishing services, which the Foundation manages, all of which are specifically designed to support open access books and publishing:
The OAPEN Library provides hosting and long-term preservation for more than 40,000 Open Access books.
DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books), operated jointly with OpenEdition, serves as a discovery and indexing service as well as a metadata platform for open access books. As of June 2026, it lists more than 107,000 publications.
The OAPEN OA Books Toolkit offers practical guidance and resources for authors, publishers, and others involved in open access book publishing.
The OAPEN Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit Dutch foundation registered at the National Library in The Hague, committed to transparency, trust, and the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI).
Graham Stone then discussed planned developments for the coming years. Building on the European projects DIAMAS and CRAFT-OA, he introduced the follow-up project AEGIS-OA, which will further expand the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH). Funded through the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme, AEGIS-OA officially launched on 1 March 2026 with a two-year duration.
A key focus of AEGIS-OA is the integration of the National Capacity Centres (NCCs), including SeDOA for the German community. Within the project’s work programme, OAPEN leads all of the project tasks that involve books. It is particularly involved in further developing the Diamond Open Access Standard (DOAS) and certification processes for Diamond Open Access, with the aim of making them more applicable to book publishing. By February 2027, the project will launch version 2.0 of DOAS, which will be directly applicable to book publishing for the first time. (Click here for the DOAS Guide for Journals).
During the discussion that followed, participants raised the question of why the visibility of Diamond Open Access specifically matters in relation to other forms of Open Access. Graham Stone pointed to the often substantial Book Processing Charges (BPCs) associated with open access books. While readers may not necessarily care whether a publication is labelled simply as open access or specifically as Diamond Open Access, the distinction is highly relevant for funders, libraries, and policymakers, particularly when considering funding models and long-term sustainability.
The speakers also emphasized that Diamond Open Access models are already well established internationally, particularly in Latin America and increasingly in Africa. In this context, they highlighted collaborations with initiatives such as ALMASI as well as current European projects including DIAMAS, CRAFT-OA, and AEGIS-OA.
Another major topic of discussion concerned the challenges of developing shared standards for Diamond Open Access books. Graham Stone noted that many criteria originally developed for journals can, in principle, be adapted for books. However, important differences must also be taken into account, particularly regarding metadata, governance structures, and editorial workflows.
Participants agreed on the value of community exchange and cross-border learning in advancing Diamond Open Access book publishing and, in particular, in supporting the development and adoption of book-specific standards.
Presentation slides: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19689213.