How many learned societies publish Diamond Open Access journals? To seek an answer to the question posed in the title, I sought out reliable data on open access journals.

Ross Mounce

To seek an answer to the question posed in the title, I sought out
reliable data on open access journals. My first port of call was the
[Directory of Open Access Journals](https://doaj.org/) (DOAJ). Although
DOAJ certainly isn't a complete listing of open access journals, as is
well documented in '[The OA Diamond Journals
Study](https://scienceeurope.org/our-resources/oa-diamond-journals-study/)'
(2021), it will at least help provide a minimum bound answer to the
question.

I downloaded journal-level data in .csv format from the DOAJ [public
data dump](https://doaj.org/docs/public-data-dump/). In this .csv you
get data on each journal, one journal per line. A very crude preliminary
search of the .csv file, after subsetting the data to exclude APC-OA
journals, reveals that 947 lines of the file include the word 'society',
albeit one of these lines is the header row. \[e.g. *grep -i 'society'
DOAJdata.csv \| wc -l* \]

But of course, it's not that easy. In some cases, a journal has the word
'Society' in the journal title but is not actually published-for or -by
a learned society. Lots of learned societies also don't necessarily call
themselves a society using that \_exact\_ word, in English.
Unsurprisingly, many learned societies operate in countries that use
languages other than English and thus the name of the society is often
registered in other languages and even non-Latin script. To do a better
job of attempting to find all the society-affiliated journals in DOAJ,
one needs to search in a multilingual-aware manner. I looked at the
[Wikidata item on 'learned
society'](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q955824) (Q955824) for
trustworthy translations of the concept in other languages.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full">
<a
href="https://rossmounce.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image.png"><img
src="https://rossmounce.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image.png"
class="wp-image-2416" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="https://rossmounce.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image.png 991w, https://rossmounce.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-300x269.png 300w, https://rossmounce.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-768x687.png 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 991px) 100vw, 991px" width="991" height="887"
alt="This image is a screenshot of part of https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q955824 . It depicts a table with four columns: &#39;Language&#39; , &#39;Label&#39; , &#39;Description&#39;, and &#39;Also Known as&#39;." /></a>
<figcaption>A screenshot of part of the Wikidata item Q955824 that
connects the concept of ‘learned society’ between many different
languages.</figcaption>
</figure>

After casting the net wide for societies and associations, I ended up
finding over 1600 journals which both charge authors and readers no fees
(diamond) AND are associated with a learned society. For transparency, I
have uploaded this list of society associated, diamond open access
journals to github
[here](https://github.com/rossmounce/Society-DiamondOA-Journals/blob/main/doaj-diamond-society-journals.csv).
Edits, additions, and corrections to this dataset are very welcome.  
  
I think 1600 journals is more than 'a few' isn't it?

Some interesting examples of fee free, society affiliated journals are
shown below, just for illustration. They are arbitrarily chosen by me,
and are not necessarily a representative sample:

<figure class="wp-block-table">
<table>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<td><strong>Journal title</strong></td>
<td><strong>eISSN</strong></td>
<td><strong>Affiliated Society or Society Publisher</strong></td>
<td><strong>DOAJ entry</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://pubs.acs.org/page/acscii/about.html">ACS Central
Science</a></td>
<td>2374-7951</td>
<td>American Chemical Society</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/2e87d85515c8477eb07d379c472c4050">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://www.mtosmt.org/">Music Theory Online</a></td>
<td>1067-3040</td>
<td>Society for Music Theory</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/bf3ab4cd7a9e49d49919553fe9a352f9">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://jesi.areeo.ac.ir/?lang=en">نامه انجمن حشره‌شناسی
ایران</a></td>
<td>2783-3968</td>
<td>Entomological Society of Iran</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/e848193c070d4422b95299e1da5b0107">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="http://ojrs.abvpress.ru/">Опухоли женской репродуктивной
системы</a></td>
<td>1999-8627</td>
<td>Russian Breast Cancer Society</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/7e12795d6ed941779057c342b2caf978">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a
href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/vamp/index.php/VAMP/about">Vertebrate
Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology </a></td>
<td>2292-1389</td>
<td>Canadian Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/a9ed2969253c48af9e3eb0e7e8876778">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://tjh.com.tr/">Turkish Journal of Hematology</a></td>
<td>1308-5263</td>
<td>Turkish Society of Hematology</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/7e6eeb4ca94942258e28cd388af24fcf">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://tehj.springeropen.com/about">The Egyptian Heart
Journal</a></td>
<td>2090-911X</td>
<td>Egyptian Society of Cardiology</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/15d4abc26f90470c9121dbe9a24d1a68">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://rbmfc.org.br/rbmfc/about">Revista Brasileira de
Medicina de Família e Comunidade</a></td>
<td>2179-7994</td>
<td>Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina de Família e Comunidade</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/46fd7fe00e24473cb2eca582b5af2ff1">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://tahiti.journal.fi/">TaHiTi</a></td>
<td>2242-0665</td>
<td>Society for Art History in Finland</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/ebcca7e161304644ac390586a263fec2">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://sciendo.com/journal/SJS">Swiss Journal of
Sociology</a></td>
<td>2297-8348</td>
<td>Swiss Sociological Association</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/998bdd6fa50445b791a63c0429535b91">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a
href="https://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/about-journals/chemical-science/">Chemical
Science</a></td>
<td>2041-6539</td>
<td>The Royal Society of Chemistry</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/7b1c63ee2d884434831a1e6dab357170">link</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://bioj-online.com/">British and Irish Orthoptic
Journal</a></td>
<td>2516-3590</td>
<td>British and Irish Orthoptic Society</td>
<td><a
href="https://doaj.org/toc/b694c82086f0461789516b2161edf829">link</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</figure>

I hope to be writing a lot more about diamond open access over the
coming months...


To seek an answer to the question posed in the title, I sought out reliable data on open access journals. My first port of call was the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Although DOAJ certainly isn’t a complete listing of open access journals, as is well documented in ‘The OA Diamond Journals Study’ (2021), it will at least help provide a minimum bound answer to the question.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

How many learned societies publish Diamond Open Access journals?