The full potential of Open Access (OA) is achieved when content is disseminated as widely as possible to academia and society at large. Diamond OA publishers play a vital role in making valuable research freely available to all.

However, operating without charging authors or readers often comes with limited resources for marketing and dissemination. This can make it challenging to ensure that the journal and the work it publishes reaches the largest, most relevant audience possible and has a significant impact.

In this course, we'll provide you with different strategies to overcome these challenges and significantly increase the visibility, discoverability, and impact of publications.

Improving visibility and discoverability : Ensure that a journal and its content are visible to the research community and beyond and easily found online through search engines and databases. This module explains why it is important to have transparent policies and how to improve the technical elements crucial for discoverability.

3 chapters : Transparent policies, technical aspects, indexation.

Marketing and communication : Maximise the impact of publications through strategic communication and marketing. Learn to effectively target different audiences, create a cohesive brand identity, and build relationships with stakeholders to expand the journal's influence.

2 infographics : Communication strategies, visual identity. 1 self-reflection tool : Planning your communication strategies.

Usage and metrics : Track performance, usage, and outreach to make data-driven decisions. . This module helps you understand various metrics, use analytical tools to measure effectiveness, and apply responsible practices to evaluate publication impact accurately.

Enhancing visibility, communication, marketing, and impact are essential imperatives for all scholarly communication to be effective. These practices enable scholars to amplify the reach and influence of their research.

6.1. Presence

• Visibility. The publisher makes sure that reasonable technical measures are taken towards improving the visibility of all its journals in search engines (general and academic), and aggregators. (REQUIRED)

• Discoverability. The publisher works to increase the discoverability of its published content by registering its platform for harvesting by relevant discovery services and aggregator databases, and by submitting its journals to abstracting and indexing databases and citation indexes. (REQUIRED)

6.2. Communication 

• Communication channels. The publisher provides all its journals with unhindered and reliable channels for communication and dissemination of their content to academia and society at large. The use of social media and social networking, collaboration with the media and the use of traditional and modern dissemination methods, which help spread the content to a broader audience, are guided by the publishers dissemination policies.  (DESIRED)

• Community management. The community of users of the publisher’s services is regularly informed of developments, policy changes, updates, new features, and functionalities, as well as about new publications. All the information provided by the publisher is accurate, reliable, regularly updated, and not misleading in any way. (DESIRED)

• Marketing. The publisher engages in appropriate and well-targeted promotional activities (including solicitation of manuscripts for their publications). It must support the promotion of all its journals' published content (e.g. by inviting post-publication reviews of outputs, inviting and moderating post-publication online comments, writing press releases, working with the media) in order to reach broader sectors of society. (DESIRED)

• Visual identity. The publisher provides a common visual identity for all its journals (e.g. by logos, corporate images, colours, etc.). (DESIRED)

6.3. Analysis

• Metrics. The publisher guarantees that all its journals offer comprehensive, accurate and reliable metric indicators detailing content usage, e.g. article-level metrics (visits, views, downloads, citations), along with publication-level metrics, altmetric indicators, and geographical distribution of visitors. (DESIRED)

• Analytical tools. The publisher is clear on the analytical tools, algorithms, methodologies and/or external service providers that are employed for data generation and collection. This requirement is aligned with data protection regulation. (DESIRED)