ALMASI Diamond OA Policy Forum
If you are interested in the funding questions around Diamond Open Access, join the conversation at the Diamond OA Policy Forum!
New initiative: Diamond Reviewer Pledge
A group of researchers connected to the FORRT network (Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training) and the Münster Center for Open Science recently launched a new initiative called the Diamond Reviewer Pledge. More than 80 signatories joined in the first month alone.
By signing the pledge, researchers commit to reviewing at least one article in the next 12 months for a diamond open access journal – a journal that charges neither authors nor readers, is run by the scholarly community itself, and lets authors keep the copyright to their work.
The pledge is built on a simple idea: peer review is unpaid work carried out by researchers who are mostly funded from public money. Commercial publishers charge for access to the results of that work – global spending on academic publishing between 2019 and 2025 is estimated at more than USD 15 billion, and the largest publishers report operating margins above 30% – while diamond journals bypass that model entirely: they make no money off either authors or readers, and the value stays with the community that created it.
The authors of the pledge highlight several points:
- Diamond journals are often run by small groups of volunteers with no paid editorial staff to fall back on, so a willingness to say yes to a review quickly matters far more there than at titles with a paid editorial office.
- The pledge doesn't ask anyone to boycott commercial or prestigious journals – it's a minimum commitment, not an exclusive restriction. Many signatories will keep reviewing for other journals as well.
- The initiative also offers guidelines for reviewers (how to budget your reviewing capacity, how to write constructive reports, how to get your reviews credited, e.g. via ORCID) and guidelines for the editors of diamond journals (how to clearly present themselves as diamond, how to recruit reviewers deliberately, and how to respect reviewers' time).
- The website also lists six resources you can use to check whether a given journal is genuinely diamond (Diamond Discovery Hub, DOAJ, Open Journals, OpenAlex, Free Journal Network, DOAB).
After signing, signatories can claim a Diamond Reviewer badge, which they're welcome to display on their website, in their CV, or in their email signature.
