Here you'll learn more about our pilots and what you can to do become part of our community (see the Contents on the right side of the header image for easier navigation).

In brief: what does Quartz OA do?

We are building the first platform cooperative in the academic publishing field. Our goal is to create a sustainable future for independent academic publishing and promote fair practices in scholarly communications. We are now entering an exciting stage in the development of Quartz OA: we are preparing to launch pilots with a number of journals, journal hosting platforms, libraries and scholars. In this FAQ you will find all the relevant information about the pilots.

What is the scope of the pilots?

This pilot stage will imply integrating a donations mechanism in the websites of participating journals/publishers and journal hosting platforms. Specifically, the donation mechanism is a 'button' allowing anyone to make direct donations to the journal and register their interest in becoming part of Quartz OA community.

But there is more to it than 'just' a button. In fact, this pilot is a preparatory stage for the roll-out of our browser extension which will send automatic microdonations from the readers to the partner journals. The integration of the button will at the same time enable the reception by the partner journals of such automatic micro-payments once the browser extension is up and running.

... and the goals?

The goals of the pilots are twofold: raise funds for the journals and build a community around Quartz OA.

The donation 'button' will allow journals to raise funds. How this is done will depend on the needs and capacity of the partner journals. This can be a formal crowdfunding campaign where you will identify the sum you would like to raise for specific needs. If you wish to go this way, we will be happy to support you and coordinate our communication efforts with you. If you are not interested in running a crowdfunding campaign, this is also fine. The integration of the donation mechanism can be accompanied by a communication campaign from our side and will essentially be a preparation for the rollout of the browser extension.

The second goal of the pilot is about building a community of like-minded academics willing to support independent scholar-led publishing and make it the 'new normal'. This goal is equally - if not more - important than raising funds. Once a scholar makes a donation to a partner journal, they will be invited to pre-register in the Quartz OA community. This will allow us to create a foundation for the future Quartz OA platform coop (read more about it here).

What journals/publishers are invited to join Quartz OA pilots?

Our ultimate goal is to foster independent scholar-led open access publishing. This is why we are primarily seeking to engage with learned societies, university press-based and other independent scholarly publishing initiatives that do not charge any fees to readers or authors (Diamond OA).

At this stage, we accept to the Quartz OA community only those journals/publishers that are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and/or participate in the Free Journal Network (FJN). We, however, add one more criterion for journal/publisher admission to the Quartz OA community: at this stage we do not accept the participation of journals published by commercial publishers such as, for example, RELX (Elsevier), Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor and Francis, Springer, SAGE, and Brill. Our goal is to support independent scholarly journals and publishers, remember? 🙂 By supporting independent scholar-led journals and publishers we seek to help the academic community to retain the value it generates.

Journals that are currently under a commercial publisher but seek ways to transition to independent publishing are welcome to contact us for a discussion of how Quartz OA can help with the crowdfunding of such a transition.

Why only focus on independent Diamond OA publishers?

We explain our position in more detail in our white paper, but, in brief, we want to make scholarly publishing more equitable and just. APC-based models create inequalities by limiting the possibilities for open knowledge dissemination for those with less institutional funding. Diamond OA - levying no fees for either reading or publishing - is the only fair model. But, at the same time, this model lacks financial sustainability relying on volunteering/unpaid labor and (sometimes) unstable sources of funding. This is why enabling additional financial support for such journals may benefit the academic publishing ecosystem as a whole.

Why use membership in DOAJ/FJN as a proxy for assessing journals' trustworthiness?

Standing on the shoulders of giants is the answer! Currently, we do not have sufficient resources to independently conduct an in-depth check and assess whether a journal/publisher adheres to the principles and values which we support at Quartz OA (see more about our values in our white paper). This is why we identified several organisations that have developed admission criteria of their own that are in agreement with our values and principles and that allow ensuring journals'/publishers' trustworthiness.

Currently, admission to DOAJ is conditioned by the journals'/publishers' adherence to the principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing (available here: https://doaj.org/apply/transparency/). These principles have been developed by DOAJ in collaboration with COPE, OASPA and WAME - organisations with significant expertise and a crucial role in the scholarly communications ecosystem. We believe that this is sufficient justification for building upon the principles they have developed.

As for the Free Journal Network, the admission is conditioned by a range of criteria (see here: https://freejournals.org/membership-criteria/2019-2/) focusing on the journals'/publishers' trustworthiness but also requiring their adherence to the Fair Open Access Principles. The latter stipulate, in particular, that a journal must be controlled by the scholarly community. Which is exactly what we are looking for.

We welcome suggestions of other organisations and networks membership in which we could use as a proxy for assessing the journals'/publishers' trustworthiness and alignment with the values we at Quartz OA uphold, such as openness, transparency, equality, diversity and inclusion.

We are a journal/publisher/hosting platform and want to participate in the pilots - what do we need to do?

The installation of our donation software will only require a moderate investment of time or resources from your side and we will offer full support to help you setting everything up.

We will guide you through the process, but the main steps will be:

1. Setting up a business PayPal account

2. Setting up a micropayment account

3. Installing the donation button on your website

If you are interested in knowing more and trying this out - the most important thing to do at this stage is to contact us at [email protected]!

How will the 'automatic micro-payments' work?

Individual scholars will be able to register as part of Quartz OA community and install our browser extension. This latter will automatically send micro-payments to Quartz OA partner journals as scholars browse their websites. Users will be able to set the value of the micro-payments themselves. We are working with university libraries to finance this micro-payment mechanism for their affiliated scholars.

For the journals, the integration is transparent. Once the donation button is integrated in the webpage, it will automatically allow the reception of micropayments when other users - members of the Quartz OA community - visit the page.

What's the role of academic libraries in the pilots?

Academic libraries can be key actors in the quest for fairer, more sustainable independent scholarly publishing. And Quartz OA will provide mechanisms allowing libraries to easily invest into independent scholarly publishing the funds freed by divesting from subscriptions.

How does it work from the library perspective?

We draw inspiration from the 'subscribe-to-open' model and broaden it. Instead of subscribing to particular publishers or journals and entering into separate agreements with each of these, a library will be able to 'subscribe' - or pledge its support - to the whole community of Quartz OA partner journals simultaneously. The funds pledged will then be automatically distributed only to those journals that the affiliated scholars access (view or download).

So, a come-back of the 'pay-per-view' model?

Not exactly. It is not a traditional 'pay per view' model just like the 'subscribe-to-open' is not a 'traditional' subscription model. Our community of supported journals will only include trusted scholar-led Diamond OA journals and, potentially, scholar-led APC-based journals willing to transition to the Diamond OA model. Meaning that access to them will be free and open regardless of whether you work with us to support them or not.

I'm a library and I want to join Quartz OA - what do I need to do?

There are currently three possibilities for libraries to get involved and you can choose whatever is appropriate for you at this stage:

1. Endorse our initiative and invite your affiliated scholars to register with us

2. Get involved in setting up our cooperative: we are now looking for active members of the academic community that would like to join forces and start setting up the governance and membership structure of the cooperative.

3. Make a financial pledge to support the partner Quartz OA journals and we will help you distribute this pledge through our browser extension. You decide how much you want to pledge and over what time period. No need to make any money transfers to anyone at this stage, just get in touch with us: your resolve to support fair OA is what counts.

I'm a scholar and I want to join Quartz OA - what do I need to do?

There are several possibilities for you to get involved into the Quartz OA community:

• If you are interested in testing our browser extension once it's ready (quite soon!) and starting to support fair OA publishing - do get in touch with us at [email protected] or hit the ‘Register’ button above.

• Help us build the platform cooperative! We are now looking for active members of the academic community that would like to join forces with us and start setting up the governance and membership structure of the cooperative.

• Talk to your librarian and tell them about our initiative - we need libraries' support to make independent OA publishing sustainable. We are looking to establish agreements with university libraries to fund the micropayments of their affiliated scholars. To know more about the role of the academic libraries, see the section above.

• Recommend any journals and publishers that you would like to see as a part of our Quartz OA community.

How else can I become part of the community?

There is a variety of ways you could get involved in our growing community, here are just some of them:

1. Recommend any journals and publishers that you would like to see as a part of our Quartz OA community.

2. Share your expertise! Right now we are getting to some of the key aspects of our organisation design and will be needing additional inputs on such topics as the legal aspects of setting up a platform coop, and its governance structure.

3. Help build the platform. Are you interested in participating in the development of our technology? Get in touch at [email protected]!

4. Twit about this initiative or or talk about it to your peers – we need you to spread the word in order to build the community, our initiative will not take off without the support of the vocal proponents of the open access movement.

5. Comment on our white paper (you can find it our pubpub space or on zenodo), share it with your peers or help translate it into other languages. We are sharing it under the CC BY 4.0 licence so feel free to do so. However, do get in touch at [email protected] before you start translating it - so we can avoid work duplication and coordinate efforts!

6. Drop us a line at [email protected] if you have questions, ideas or collaboration offers!

What about the long-term?

The pilot is just the first element of a much bigger picture. The next steps will be:

• launching our browser extension at a larger scale and allowing anyone to download it and send automatic micro-payments to participating journals/publishers

• creating a platform allowing users to participate in crowdfunding campaigns and connect with journals and publishers in other meaningful ways (such as providing services of peer-review, copyediting, translation and language support).

• establishing a cooperative to drive and govern our platform.

To learn more about our vision for the future of Quartz OA, read our white paper here.

Also, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter not to miss out on any important updates. Teaser: we have foreseen quite a few fun activities, giveaways and events in the coming months!

Also… why ‘Quartz‘?

Green, Black, Gold, Diamond OA… and now Quartz? Yes! Quartz is an abundant but also a hard material. We use it metaphorically to envisage a different route to Open Access. Quartz is so strong it can ‘scratch’ Gold Open Access and perforate holes in paywalls :) Of course, diamond is even stronger than our humble quartz, but we believe these two transparent Open Access models have similar missions and can collaborate as good allies. The properties of quartz also make it extremely valuable for technological solutions.

We will also use “Quartz” as a name for our community currency that we’ll launch within our platform cooperative in the foreseeable future. So, we’ll use Quartz metaphorically just as other cheap materials like paper are used to represent currencies.