The CRAFT-OA project (Creating a Robust Accessible Federated Technology for Open Access) will improve the conditions for publishing OA diamond journals. CRAFT-OA’s 23 consortium partners from 14 European countries are all engaged in institutional publishing and its infrastructures, and committed to sustaining and developing capacities in the field. Within 36 months, CRAFT-OA will deliver technical and community tools, training events, training materials, information, and services for the Diamond OA institutional publishing environment. It will foster communities of practice with the capacity to sustain the project improvements over time.

Within the framework of EU project CRAFT-OA, we are conducting 10 semistructured interviews with institutional platform service providers and with editors of scientific journals all over Europe. The interviews are a supplement to the quantitative DIAMAS survey. They are designed as guided interviews, so that detailed answers and clarifications are possible. The content covers topics such as hosting, submissions and reviews, production, metrics, indexing, archiving, finance, and quality management.

The non-representative interviews offer in-depth insights into the needs of editors and platform service providers. The thematic evaluation of the interview will allow us to bring the concrete needs and problems of the editors and platform operators into the CRAFT-OA project to improve the conditions for publishing OA diamond journals.

At PUBMET, we will be able to present the first results of our interviews and outline trends in the needs of publishing platforms and editors. The detailed analysis is still pending, but a first review shows that indexing, financing and the production of certain formats pose the most problems for both platform operators and publishers.