NSK among major Croatian research institutions to set up the Croatian Diamond Open Access Centre
In December 2025, a cooperation agreement enabling the setting up of the Croatian Diamond Open Access Centre was signed, with the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) as one of the signatories.
Initiated by OPERAS-HR, the Croatian branch of OPERAS, a research infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in social sciences and humanities in the European Research Area (ERA), the agreement’s signing is part of the efforts coordinated by the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) to expand and strengthen the Diamond OA community in Europe.
Apart from NSK, the agreement was signed by other four major Croatian research institutions – the University of Zagreb Computing Centre (SRCE), University of Zadar, which serves as the OPERAS National Node for Croatia, Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Croatian Association for Scholarly Communication (CROASC).
Croatian contribution to efforts to strengthen the Diamond OA community in Europe
The Croatian Diamond Open Access Centre will coordinate all diamond open access activities in Croatia in compliance with the related European guidelines and the Croatian Open Science Plan. Its establishment is the task of a working group formed as part of the agreement’s signing which will develop the Centre’s organisational, management and funding model along with the plan of its activities.
Diamond open access, which will be the focus of the Centre’s work, enables free access to published research, without fees for either the authors or the readers. In contrast to standard commercial academic publishing models, it is entirely managed by the academic and research communities and not subject to the interests of the market, which enables economic-, linguistic- and culture-oriented research inclusivity and the maintaining of a high quality of research.
The purpose of the European Diamond Capacity Hub, set up in January 2025, is to provide the European research community with a sustainable and seamless diamond open access infrastructure as a standard model for academic publishing. Its activities are aimed at strengthening the academic community through providing diamond open access publishers and centres of expertise with coordination along with training and technical support in compliance with ERA’s objectives.
The operational criteria for diamond open access journals, which have been defined as part of the DIAMAS and CRAFT-OA projects, together with the objectives of the Croatian Open Science Plan, make the normative and strategic framework for furthering diamond open access model at both the European and national levels.