Celebrating the Publication of the Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access
The Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access represents the outcome of discussions that took place during the 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access, organised in Bengaluru earlier this year.
The Roadmap was developed through a truly collaborative approach that was led by the International Oversight Committee, whose members were tasked with reflecting upon the discussions and deliberations of 347 Summit participants representing 36 countries. The result is a shared global framework with an Action Plan to transition scholarly communication and publishing towards a collective, community-led model that is free for authors and readers, and grounded in the principle that scientific knowledge is a fundamental human right and public good.
Building on the foundations laid at the previous Global Summits in Toluca (2023) and Cape Town (2024), the Bengaluru Roadmap advances a coordinated international vision for strengthening and sustaining Diamond Open Access (OA).
Six Priority Action Areas
The Roadmap identifies six priority Action Areas that together provide a framework for transforming scholarly communication systems at the national, regional, and global levels:
- Integrating Diamond Open Access into national policy and legal frameworks
- Redirecting publishing expenditure toward community-governed infrastructures
- Reforming research evaluation systems so that they recognise Diamond Open Access publications, multilingual scholarship, and community-governed venues
- Strengthening shared infrastructure and interoperability
- Recognising and supporting the human labour behind scholarly communication
- Promoting linguistic diversity and marginalised knowledge systems
Addressed to governments, research funding and performing organisations, universities, evaluation bodies, and scholarly communities, the Roadmap offers a flexible framework for action that can be adapted across national, regional, disciplinary, and institutional contexts.
At its core, the document calls for a structural shift in how publicly funded knowledge is produced, evaluated, and shared. It reinforces the idea that scholarly communication should be governed by scholarly communities and supported as a public good rather than driven primarily by commercial interests.
EDCH and the Global Diamond OA Community
The EDCH was proud to participate in and support the 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access as part of the broader international effort to strengthen community-led scholarly publishing efforts.
EDCH Co-coordinator Johan Rooryck contributed to the Summit discussions and activities. He was a member of the International Oversight Committee that authored the Roadmap and Action Plan, representing the EDCH and its commitment to a sustainable, aligned, and community-led Diamond OA future.
The publication of the Bengaluru Roadmap reflects the growing momentum behind Diamond OA globally and highlights the significance of international collaboration in building equitable and sustainable scholarly communication systems.
Read the Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan
The full publication is available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/20168763