Jayshree Mamtora, Tracy Creagh, Caitlin Savage, Lucy Walton and Donna Coventry

This article is based on a presentation at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2026 that was included in the session: The Transformative Power of Diamond Open Access: Building Knowledge as a Global Good

Diamond open access publishing is gaining momentum across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, with more than 200 journals now operating across the region. Supported largely by university libraries, these community-driven journals are free for both readers and authors. A growing Australasian Diamond Journal Publishing Community of Practice is helping institutions share expertise, develop standards, build publishing capacity, and strengthen advocacy for non-commercial scholarly communication. Examples from Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand universities demonstrate that successful Diamond publishing can begin with practical support, shared infrastructure, and collaboration, rather than large-scale investment.

Diamond open access (OA) publishing is gaining momentum across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, supported by a growing network of institutions, libraries, and scholarly communities committed to making research freely available to both readers and authors.

A Growing but Uneven Landscape

Open Access Australasia describes Diamond OA as a publishing model in which journals are free for readers to access and free for authors to publish in. These journals are typically community-driven and supported by institutions or national infrastructure rather than commercial publishers.

While Diamond publishing has a long history in Australasia, support for it has often developed in isolated and piecemeal ways, with limited national coordination. Recent data, however, indicates that the sector is substantial and growing. There are now at least 200 Diamond journals operating across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, with the majority published or supported by the tertiary education sector.

In Australia, just under half of all universities support Diamond journals, while in Aotearoa New Zealand the figure is slightly higher, with just over half of universities and tertiary institutions involved in supporting Diamond publishing initiatives.

University libraries play a particularly important role in this ecosystem. Many act as journal hosts, provide publishing advice, or maintain open publishing infrastructure. Others are still exploring what it means to take on a publishing role within their institution.

The most commonly used platform is PKP’s open-source software Open Journal Systems (OJS), although institutions also make use of university websites, custom-built publishing solutions, and commercial platforms such as Scholastica.

The Value of a Community of Practice

The diversity of approaches across the region highlights the need for greater collaboration and knowledge sharing. It was this need that led to the establishment of the Australasian Diamond Journal Publishing Community of Practice in 2024.

The initiative emerged from discussions following a satellite webinar held alongside the first Global Diamond Open Access Summit in 2023. Participants recognised that many librarians and publishing support staff were working independently with Diamond journals and could benefit from sharing expertise, experiences, and resources.

Today, the Community of Practice has grown to over 80 members, representing 31 Australian universities, seven New Zealand universities, and several external organisations. Most members work in libraries, although academic colleagues also contribute their expertise.

Meeting virtually every two months, the group provides an informal forum for discussing challenges, sharing solutions, and learning from one another’s experiences supporting Diamond journals.

More broadly, the community reflects increasing awareness of alternative scholarly publishing models and a growing desire within the sector to reduce reliance on commercial publishers.

Beyond Discussion: Building Sector Capability

The Community of Practice serves as much more than a discussion forum. It is increasingly becoming a mechanism for capacity building across the Australasian higher education sector.

Work focuses on developing shared language, evidence, standards, advocacy, and practical resources that can support institutions regardless of their publishing maturity. Members are also working to map Diamond journal activity across the region, providing a clearer understanding of the scale and impact of community-led publishing.

A range of practical resources is being shared, including governance frameworks, service model templates, and guidance documents. The community is also promoting standards relating to quality assurance, licensing, and good publishing practice, while providing peer support to libraries at different stages of developing publishing services.

Examples of Diamond Publishing in Practice

Across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, several institutions demonstrate what established library-supported publishing services can achieve.

Deakin University Library hosts and supports a range of Diamond OA journals edited and managed by academic staff through its Open Journals at Deakin platform. These journals are freely accessible and indexed across multiple databases, helping to increase their visibility and discoverability.

The library also maintains access to discontinued titles, ensuring valuable scholarly content remains available to researchers and the wider community.

At Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the library-based QUT Open Press supports the publication of open textbooks, journals, and other open educational resources.

A dedicated journal manager provides support for a number of Diamond journals, while editorial responsibility remains with academic staff. This model demonstrates how libraries can combine publishing expertise with academic leadership to support sustainable open publishing.

Diverse Pathways to Participation

Importantly, institutions do not need to establish comprehensive publishing programs from the outset.

James Cook University, for example, supports journals through hosting services, guidance on OJS, and the development of formal agreements such as Memoranda of Understanding. The University of Melbourne provides support for scholar-led journals through publishing advice, DOI registration, and clear guidance distinguishing Diamond OA from Read and Publish agreements. Meanwhile, Western Sydney University is building complementary capability through initiatives such as Western Open Books, which provides fee-free open publishing services.

These examples illustrate that universities can enter the Diamond OA space at different points and develop services gradually over time.

Tuwhera: A Diamond Success Story

One of the region’s most notable examples of Diamond publishing infrastructure is Tuwhera Open Access at Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Launched in 2016 with just two journal titles, Tuwhera has expanded significantly and now hosts more than 25 journals. As AUT’s central hub for open access publishing, the platform also supports the university’s institutional repository, open books and monographs, and conference proceedings. The ecosystem continues to grow, with the recent addition of a centralised research data repository and plans to introduce a Pressbooks platform for open educational resources.

Tuwhera’s success has been underpinned by a strong institutional commitment to open-source technologies, supported by collaboration between the library and the university’s IT services. By maintaining and hosting its own infrastructure, AUT has been able to develop a flexible publishing environment capable of supporting a wide range of publication types and fostering greater bibliodiversity.

Looking Ahead

The experiences of institutions across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand demonstrate that scaling Diamond OA does not require every university to build a fully developed journal publishing service from day one.

Instead, growth can begin with shared expertise, practical support, and collaborative infrastructure that empowers academic-led publishing. As the Australasian Diamond Journal Publishing Community of Practice continues to mature, it is helping to create the foundations for a more connected, sustainable, and community-driven publishing ecosystem across the region.

Jayshree Mamtora, James Cook University, Australia
Tracy Creagh, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Caitlin Savage, Deakin University, Australia
Lucy Walton, Western Sydney University, Australia
Donna Coventry, Auckland University of Technology, Aotearoa New Zealand

WOLFcon 2026 brought together members of the Open Library Foundation community, as well as other professionals involved in developing open-source technologies and infrastructures for libraries. The conference provided a platform for discussing the evolution of systems such as FOLIO and related applications, alongside broader issues concerning open infrastructures, artificial intelligence, metadata, collaborative collection management, and the long-term stewardship of scholarly resources.

Throughout the conference, the need for libraries to retain greater control over the technological infrastructures on which their activities increasingly depend was a recurring theme. In her opening address, Professor Ellen Euler situated this discussion within the broader concept of the knowledge commons. She identified three major threats to these commons:

Enclosure: resources or infrastructures that were previously shared become restricted.

Extraction: data and other resources generated by communities are appropriated by third parties.

Capture: the value produced collectively is ultimately controlled by a limited number of actors.

Artificial intelligence can exacerbate all of these phenomena. At the same time, however, measures intended to prevent large-scale extraction must not prevent legitimate users from accessing information. Therefore, the question of governance arises: libraries must establish mechanisms that protect common resources while ensuring they remain usable. Procurement policies were identified as a means by which libraries can demand greater transparency, interoperability, and control over vital infrastructure. However, the appropriate governance models for knowledge commons remain to be determined.

Several sessions examined the increasing use of artificial intelligence in library operations. The session “Beyond the Chatbot: Agentic AI and the Future of Library Workflows”, presented the SCOPE framework for evaluating potential AI applications. The framework’s five components — Suitable, Content, Oversight, Permissions, and Evaluation — provide a structured method for determining whether AI is appropriate for a particular workflow, and importantly, who remains responsible for the process and its supervision.

Technical presentations also explored the interaction between AI agents and library systems. The difference between APIs, which provide a defined entry point to information systems, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) layers, which enable AI agents to interact with APIs, was explained. Experiments conducted in the United States have tested the use of AI to transform MARC21 bibliographic data into BIBFRAME. This work contributes to the development of Blue Core, an open bibliographic data repository, the minimum viable product of which is expected in spring 2027. Other related initiatives include Index Data’s bibsync conversion tool and the Library of Congress’s Modern MARC project, which aims to bring MARC closer in line with RDA concepts. Nevertheless, these experiments demonstrate the considerable computational and token costs associated with large-scale, AI-assisted metadata transformation.

Another important conference theme was open bibliographic metadata. While the Swedish National Library has moved away from MARC for its catalogue and the LIBRIS national union catalogue, Stanford University currently operates in a hybrid MARC/BIBFRAME environment. Stanford is also participating in the Blue Core initiative. The discussions highlighted the uncertain copyright status of bibliographic metadata in the USA, primarily due to long-standing copy-cataloguing practices. In response, Stanford University has developed an Open Metadata Policy Toolkit and established a Center for Open Metadata. The conference presented a broader direction towards releasing bibliographic metadata under CC0 wherever possible. Following the presentation by Rochelle Lundy and Tom Cramer from Stanford University, the ISSN International Centre introduced its freemium model to the audience, explaining that it actively collaborates with DOAJ and Latindex by providing them with free access to its database, enabling them to reuse the metadata. Furthermore, the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources contains over 60,000 records which are also made available free of charge to the community.

Collaborative collections and rescue collecting

The ISSN International Centre took part in one of the main sessions at the conference, titled “Designing for Collective Agency: Shared Collections, Cyclops, and Consortial Action”, which was presented by Gaëlle Béquet (ISSN IC), Boaz Nadav Manes (Lehigh University), and Sebastian Hammer (IndexData). The session focused on the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP) and its associated prototype, CYCLOPS.

The CCLP brings together around 80 representatives from libraries, consortia, publishers, aggregators, and service providers. The project aims to redefine collaboration throughout the library collections lifecycle, as well as developing the necessary governance, standards and software infrastructure to support coordinated decision-making. The ISSN International Centre contributed to the Cataloguing and Metadata Working Group of the project, which examined the descriptive, transactional, holdings and preservation metadata required for identifying and managing different categories of resources.

The Prague presentation used endangered Ukrainian scholarly journals as a concrete example of how authoritative metadata can support rescue collecting. Since 2014, and especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainian universities and research institutions in occupied areas have either been displaced or reorganised. Some of the journals originally published by these institutions have subsequently been republished or re-registered by institutions operating under Russian occupation authorities. This may involve the reuse of titles and ISSNs, the replication of archives, the association of new identifiers with publications that claim continuity with Ukrainian predecessors, or changes to publisher and institutional information.

In these situations, ISSN metadata can provide valuable evidence. While an ISSN does not establish ownership or copyright, ISSN records document titles, publishers, places of publication, relationships between earlier and later titles, and related editions. They therefore provide a bibliographic chronology that can help to distinguish between competing claims concerning a journal’s identity and history. Ukrainian researchers have found this information useful for tracing displaced and appropriated publications.

The approach presented at WOLFcon combines local expertise with international bibliographic infrastructure. Ukrainian researchers and journal editors, along with the ISSN National Centre for Ukraine, use institutional records, registration information, journal websites, archived sites, PDFs, DOI metadata and ISSN records to identify potentially problematic publications. Any cases requiring clarification can then be reported to the ISSN International Centre, where relevant bibliographic records will be reviewed and, where necessary, corrected or supplemented with historical notes¬¬.

However, the central challenge is to move from identification to preservation. While the ISSN Network can establish what a journal is and document its bibliographic history, it is not an archive itself. CCLP provides a complementary framework through which libraries and consortia can collectively decide who should acquire, harvest, digitise or preserve endangered material. The proposed workflow runs from detection and bibliographic verification, through authoritative description and metadata sharing, to coordinated preservation by participating libraries.

CYCLOPS is intended to provide the middleware through which these collaborative intentions and decisions can be implemented. The broader CCLP approach emphasises optional and flexible cooperation, rather than requiring fully integrated consortial structures. Through CYCLOPS, institutions can share information about their collection intentions, coordinate acquisitions and preservation decisions, reduce unnecessary duplication, and optimise the use of distributed expertise and resources. The Ukrainian case study shows how such an infrastructure could respond quickly to scholarly and cultural heritage at risk due to geopolitical events.

WOLFcon 2026 therefore showcased an important convergence of developments currently impacting libraries, including the need to control critical digital infrastructures, the responsible integration of AI into professional workflows, the opening up of bibliographic metadata and the development of new collaborative stewardship mechanisms. CCLP and CYCLOPS are particularly relevant to the ISSN International Centre because they demonstrate how authoritative ISSN metadata can evolve from identification and discovery to providing an actionable signal that supports coordinated collection development and preservation.

The ISSN International Centre was present at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress, which took place in Busan, South Korea, from 10 to 13 August. Attending this event gave us the opportunity to present the Centre’s activities and services to an international audience. We were particularly glad to do so in Asia, where librarians and publishing professionals may be less familiar with our work.

Beyond presenting our activities, the Congress provided a unique opportunity to engage with librarians and information professionals from around the world. Participants brought their own experience and expertise to discussions, offering a wide range of professional and cultural perspectives. The event was also a chance to reconnect with colleagues, put faces to familiar names from email exchanges and strengthen relationships across the international library community.

We met with colleagues from the ISSN Centre at the National Library of Korea. We also spoke with representatives from other member countries of the ISSN Network, notably Brazil, Iran and Nigeria, who sit on the ISSN IC Governing Board. It was also a pleasure to meet Ms Jennefer Nicholson, former Secretary-General of IFLA (2008-2016), whose insights into cultural cooperation and contemporary geopolitical issues are invaluable.

These encounters are an essential part of the IFLA experience, fostering both professional collaboration and solidarity within the international community. Our colleague Hamideh Memari from Iran, who gave two presentations during the Congress, was able to exchange with experts from across the profession, including Pat Riva from Concordia University, whose extensive expertise contributes to several international review groups. Such exchanges highlight the importance of the professional networks built through IFLA, particularly in challenging circumstances.

Presenting the new ISSN Portal

During a dedicated session at the Tech Lab, attended by around fifty professionals, Gaelle Bequet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, presented the new ISSN Portal.
The presentation generated considerable interest among participants and provided an opportunity to discuss the evolution of ISSN services, including ISSN-H. The Congress also enabled the ISSN International Centre to establish initial contacts with potential new partners and share information about the process of opening new ISSN National Centres.

Exploring the challenges shaping the profession

Alongside these exchanges, the Congress offered a rich programme of presentations and discussions on some of the major transformations affecting libraries, publishing and access to information.

Among the recurring themes were the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the growing polarisation of public discourse. As AI becomes increasingly involved in the creation, discovery and management of content, information professionals are facing important questions about how to preserve the reliability, neutrality and integrity of information. At the same time, discussions underlined the continuing importance of reading in an increasingly digital and AI-driven environment, and the essential role of libraries in engaging with readers, schools, families and universities.

Our team attended some fascinating presentations, including “The Transformative Power of Diamond Open Access: Building Knowledge as a Global Good’, organised by the Serials and Other Continuing Resources (SCORE) section. Six female researchers and information professionals presented interesting initiatives, including the Open Journals Collective (openjournalscollective.org), which supports journals operating under the diamond open access model. These initiatives also include the Chinese academic repository Pub Scholar (pubscholar.cn), which offers AI-assisted search functionality within its catalogue; the Taiwan Open Access Journals platform (toaj.stpi.niar.org.tw), which lists humanities and social science publications and provides access to their content; and the Tuwhera platform (tuwhera.aut.ac.nz), which offers researchers free editorial services. This session perfectly illustrated the dynamics of open access within the global research ecosystem.

Another presentation that stood out to us was that of Mr Tomáš Foltýn, Director of the National Library of the Czech Republic (NKP), who discussed the NKP’s role in preserving Ukraine’s documentary heritage since 2022, including its work in training professionals in document restoration and digitisation, and in managing a mobile digitisation unit made available to Ukrainian libraries.

From developments in open access and artificial intelligence to the preservation of documentary heritage, the Congress highlighted both the challenges facing the library and information community and the initiatives being developed to address them. It also reaffirmed the value of bringing professionals together across borders to share expertise, strengthen cooperation and explore new approaches.

For the ISSN International Centre, these few days in Busan were above all an opportunity to engage with the wider professional community while strengthening connections within the ISSN Network. Meeting colleagues from National Centres, exchanging with international partners and introducing our services to new audiences all contributed to a particularly enriching edition of the IFLA Congress.