The 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access will take place at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India from 2 to 6 February 2026. It will advance equity-driven, community-led, and sustainable models of scholarly publishing under the theme “Collaboration for Equitable Digital Infrastructures and Knowledge Commons in Agriculture and the Wider Scientific Research Ecosystem.” The Summit will feature high-level plenaries, thematic tracks, and hands-on workshops addressing equity, sustainability, multilingualism, bibliodiversity, public infrastructures, research assessment, and policy alignment. Speaker selection will ensure regional representation and gender balance, bringing diverse global perspectives to every session. The Summit intends to foster inclusive dialogue, collaboration, capacity building, and policy action. It will culminate in the launch of Regional and Global Action Plans and the adoption of the Bengaluru Roadmap for Diamond Open Access, reinforcing the idea of scholarly publishing as a global public good.
Diamond Open Access (OA) is a community-led scholarly publishing model without financial barriers for authors or readers that makes knowledge available as a global public good. It promotes equity, sustainability, multilingualism, and bibliodiversity. Diamond OA is closely aligned with the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) and its 20th Anniversary recommendations (2022). It also supports and contributes to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (2021), the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access (2022), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as the UN Global Digital Compact (2024). These global frameworks highlight the need for equitable access to information, participatory digital ecosystems, and community-driven infrastructures. UNESCO’s Global Consultation on Diamond OA (2023–2024) reaffirmed widespread global support for a model grounded in equity, multilingualism, and public infrastructure.
Building on the first two global summits—Toluca, Mexico (October 2023) and Cape Town, South Africa (December 2024)—the Bengaluru Summit aims to consolidate these efforts and advance global collaboration. Toluca marked the start of a coordinated effort to prioritize research quality over publishing prestige, while Cape Town emphasized social justice, regional and language diversity, and inclusive research assessment systems.
The 3rd Global Summit on Diamond OA seeks to contribute to a resilient, equitable, and multilingual scholarly communication ecosystem underpinned by Diamond OA models and interoperable, public digital infrastructures. The Summit envisions strengthening Diamond OA across all disciplines by catalyzing collaborative governance, public investment, and sustainable infrastructure in a global knowledge commons. The following areas will be given particular attention:
- Public digital infrastructures:
Build and provide sustainable funding for resilient, interoperable, community-owned public infrastructures and platforms that serve the research lifecycle and the public good. - Equity, inclusivity & multilingualism:
Develop inclusive publishing models that amplify the linguistic and epistemic diversity of knowledge systems and publication formats and can address technological challenges. - Collaborative & inclusive governance:
Adopt transparent and inclusive governance frameworks for institutions and scholarly societies and develop responsible research assessment. - Supportive policies & global leadership:
Align worldwide institutional and government policies for Open Access with UNESCO’s Open Science & Digital Public Infrastructure frameworks - Cross-disciplinary bridges:
Integrate scholarly perspectives on agriculture, health, environment, social sciences, and humanities.
These areas will be addressed in 6 plenary sessions and 4 concurrent thematic tracks:
Plenary sessions:
- Reimagining Scholarly Publishing for Equity and Inclusion
- Global & Regional Roundtable: Policy Convergence & Capacity Needs (UNESCO Session)
- Building and Sustaining Open Science Infrastructure
- Research Assessment Policies
- Diamond OA initiatives (led by SPH)
- Young Researchers Meeting (led by INYAS)
Thematic tracks:
Track A: Agriculture, Climate Change, and Food Systems
Track B: Medicine, Public Health, and Life Sciences
Track C: Engineering, Technology, and Applied Sciences
Track D: Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
In this way, the Summit hopes to contribute to advancing equitable participation and visibility of underrepresented researchers and institutions worldwide in shaping inclusive, multilingual Diamond Open Access. The Summit will advance the discussion around knowledge diversity, doing justice to bibliodiversity, multilingualism, local journals, indigenous knowledge, and diverse formats. It will be a place for fostering cross-regional cooperation in developing funding models that will support sustainable, community-led Open Access publishing systems.