Diamond OA Library Publishing in Indigenous and Native Studies at the University of California

Abstract

In April 2023, the American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ) officially re-launched as a diamond open access journal with eScholarship Publishing, the University of California’s open access, library-based publishing service. This ‘flip’ from a subscription-based publication model unlocked nearly 50 years of research in Native American studies and ensures that future work will be openly available to everyone. “Of all the communities represented in scholarship, Indigenous communities often lack the financial and institutional resources to even see what has been published about their lives,” notes Editor in Chief, Dr. David Delgado Shorter. “Reaching a point where we could be fully accessible was long in the making in American Indian Studies at UCLA, our host institution.” In this presentation transcript from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ (IFLA) Library Publishing Special Interest Group meeting at the 2023 World Library Congress Satellite, representatives from AICRJ and from the eScholarship Publishing program describe in greater detail the impetus for this transition to open access, the institutional and community-driven funding model that made it possible, and the efforts that went into migrating the journal, including its back issues, to a library publishing environment.