Advancing Diamond
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Coalition Publica is inviting expressions of interest for participation in two days of discussions to establish a shared vision for diamond open access publishing in Canada. Advancing Diamond / Vers l’horizon diamant will take place in person in Montreal on April 15 and 16, 2026. Those interested in participating can apply by completing the expression of interest form before February 23.
Canadian scholarly publishing is at a pivotal moment, and the diamond open access horizon may be closer than it appears. By 2028, Canada’s two main journal funding programs, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Aid to Scholarly Journals and the Fonds de recherche du Québec’s “Soutien aux revues scientifiques en français”, will fund only diamond OA journals. Meanwhile, the Tri-Agency OA policy is under revision toward immediate open access, and our community has mobilized strongly around the diamond OA model.
Sustaining and expanding diamond OA now depends on deepened collaboration. Libraries have reinforced their commitment through a five-year renewal of the Partnership for Open Access, supporting non-commercial journals on the Érudit platform. Technological momentum is also building, with OJS expected by 2028 to introduce open peer review, preprint support, continuous publishing, and typesetting tools. These changes highlight the importance of infrastructures such as Coalition Publica, which support non-commercial, scholar-led publishing.
Together, these developments create a uniquely exciting landscape for community-based publishing in Canada. To fully realize this opportunity, sustained national coordination is needed, and now is the time to convene a national conversation on a shared diamond open access vision. We hope you will join us in Montreal at Advancing Diamond / Vers l’horizon diamant.
About the event
Advancing Diamond / Vers l’horizon diamant is a 2 day, in-person meeting that will bring together researchers, librarians, journals, publishers, funding agencies, infrastructure providers and other stakeholders to elaborate a shared vision for diamond OA publishing in Canada, and develop a framework for collaboration to move this vision forward. This meeting will follow Coalition Publica’s Principles and Practices for Bilingual Meetings. We hope this event will be a milestone marking how far we have come already in collectively advancing diamond open access and an opportunity to identify ways to expand participation in future conversations and events.
Date & location
April 15 - 16, 2026
Esplanade tranquille
1442 Rue Clark
Montreal, QC
How to participate
Advancing Diamond / Vers l’horizon diamant is an interactive, no-cost, event, and participants will be engaging in active discussion. We invite participation from practitioners and administrators directly involved in all areas of diamond OA journal publishing. We have capacity for approximately 50 people, and because spaces are limited, we are asking for expressions of interest, and will make efforts to include participation from across areas of responsibility and geographical distribution.
There are no registration fees to participate. However, participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation.
Please indicate your interest in participating by February 23rd by completing this form. We will confirm participants no later than February 27th. If we have capacity after that date the registration form will remain open.
About Coalition Publica
Coalition Publica is a partnership created by Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) dedicated to the advancement of research dissemination and digital publishing in the humanities and social sciences in Canada, specifically designed to support the HSS community in the transition towards sustainable open access. Coalition Publica is pursuing this goal through the development of a non-commercial, open source national infrastructure dedicated to digital scholarly publishing, dissemination, and research—combining PKP’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) software and Érudit’s digital dissemination platform (erudit.org).
