Mihaela Cimpian, PhD. Candidate,Orthopedagogics, Radboud University

My interest in open science began out of necessity because I would have not been able to finish my bachelor without alternatives to paywalled science.

I finished my bachelor in Romania and my university there could not afford to pay the huge sums that commercial publishers were asking for subscriptions. Because of this, from day one,every student found out quite fast about other resources for gaining access to papers. Even whole departments would sometimes be in a complete state of panic whenever services such as Sci-Hub would be down.

At some point I moved abroad, and I was shocked to see that now most of the papers I needed were readily available without having to go through all the hassle I faced at home. 

It didn’t seem fair to me that just because I was now at a richer university, my life was much easier than that of my Romanian colleagues. 

This made want to do something and that’s when I found Diamond Open Access, a model of publishing that is doing what Gold Open Access promised but could not deliver due to APC’s: Ensuring access to research was fully open and equitable.

Once I became interested in equitable publishing I was lucky to find my colleagues from Free Our Knowledge who shared the same perspective, and are trying to engage other scholars in changing the publishing system through collective action. This was very motivating and opened new perspectives for me. I also became an ambassador for the Diamond OA expertise center, one of the main forces behind DOA in the Netherlands, and I organised a two-day conference on the topic of Diamond OA. Through all these experiences, I got to meet amazing people from all corners of academia who want to change this system for the better. Working with these people who cared about contexts like the one I came from, and spent their free time trying to make research more equitable, offered me a sense of fulfilment, much hope that change is possible, and a will to do more.

At the same time, there are many questions that researchers still have about Diamond OA and much work to do in changing our policies and habits. I would not hesitate to encourage anyone interested in making academia fair to look up Diamond OA to join our struggle.