Introduction
Since 2025, IReL has been promoting and coordinating members’ supports for Diamond open access publishing. Diamond open access means OA without any barriers to participation: the content is freely available to anyone to read or reuse, and authors anywhere are free to publish their works without publication charges or needing to be eligible for OA publishing agreements.
IReL already funds support for OA without barriers (such as with our Annual Reviews Subscribe to Open agreement) and infrastructure which enables the open access (such as the Directory of Open Access Journals). With our Diamond OA Program, IReL helps its member libraries to dedicate part of their collections budget to OA publishing. While member libraries fund this, IReL centralises this support by managing promotion, contracts and payments on their behalf.
For 2026, the following libraries have agreed to join our Diamond OA programme:
- Opening the Future: University of Limerick is supporting Central European University Press’s participation in the Opening the Future initiative for three years (2026-2028), funding OA book publication and allowing UL access to selected CEU closed content.
- Open Book Collective: Institute of Art, Design + Technology, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin have joined the Open Book Collective’s ScholarLed Package, a consortium of six academic-led, non-profit, born open access book publishers, for one year (2026).
Diamond OA’s Alignment with IReL’s Mission Statement
IReL’s mission is “to provide sustainable and inclusive access to scholarly communications in support of Irish research excellence and impact” and is guided by values including Openness, Equity, Integrity, Sustainability, and Collaboration.
IReL’s Diamond OA program aligns with this mission in the following ways:
a. Openness
Diamond OA provides immediate, free access to scholarly work and removes author-facing publishing charges, ensuring both reading and publishing access are barrier-free. This directly supports the mission value of Opening up access and supporting transparency in scholarly communication.
b. Equity
Diamond OA removes financial barriers for both readers and authors, including independent researchers or those from less resourced institutions. This aligns with IReL’s commitment to fair and equitable access and participation.
c. Sustainability
The mission emphasises economically, environmentally, and socially responsible approaches to securing the long-term future of scholarly communications. Diamond OA is explicitly designed to be sustainable, replacing charges per article published with fair and transparent collective funding models.
d. Collaboration
IReL’s Diamond OA Program is based on consortial support for our members, and partnerships with publishers such as CEU Press, and initiatives such as the Open Book Collective, reflecting our commitment to working in collaboration with members, stakeholders, international peers and publishers.
e. Supporting Irish research excellence and impact
By enabling barrier-free publishing, Diamond OA helps increase the global visibility and impact of research from Ireland by ensuring universal access and maximising readership and citation potential.