The research comprised three parts: 

1. Community consultation, through a survey, to identify the potential of African Diamond OA journals and platforms, challenges faced by them and their funding needs in order to plan our grant funding calls for projects accordingly. The survey tool used drew on the “Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication” (DIAMAS) Institutional Publishing in the European Research Area Landscape Survey questionnaire¹ adapted to our needs.
2. Expert reports that include qualitative analysis of Diamond OA journals and institutional and national Diamond OA publishing initiatives in 22 countries, their challenges, needs, gaps and opportunities, as well as suggested support actions on the journal, institutional and national levels. 
3. Desk research in three countries building on previous OA publishing projects results.  

The survey for Diamond OA journals (in English and French) and the survey for OA publishing platforms (English) hosting Diamond OA journals included the following six sections with a total of 37 questions for journals and 39 questions for the platforms: 

1. General features
2. Funding, incentives, institutional support, sustainability and collaborations
3. Editorial quality and research integrity/publication ethics
4. Technical service efficiency
5. Visibility and discoverability (including indexation)
6. Challenges, funding needs and support required to make Diamond OA publishing more sustainable

​The survey results are presented in sections 3. Diamond OA journals and 4. Continental, national and institutional platforms for Diamond OA journals. 

To create a more comprehensive picture of Diamond OA publishing in Africa, we collaborated with experts in OA publishing in 22 countries (Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) to conduct qualitative analysis mapping the national Diamond OA publishing landscape. While writing their country reports, the experts engaged their national networks - e.g. university and library consortia - in qualitative data collection. We asked the experts to answer the following questions:

• Who/Which are the significant Diamond OA journals, institutional and national Diamond OA publishing initiatives (journal platforms, etc.) in their countries.
• What are the challenges of Diamond OA publishing, needs, gaps and opportunities of Diamond OA publishing support in their countries.
• How to improve quality Diamond OA publishing in their countries: suggested support actions on the journal, institutional and national levels. 

This online version does not include highlights from experts’ reports, which can be found in the full report (PDF). 

¹ Full survey analysis, full country reports, complete country reports, and the entire survey dataset. The key findings are also presented in a synopsis available here.