The Seismica initiative: a community-led Diamond Open Access journal for seismological research

On 24 November 2020, the Springer Nature publishing group announced the introduction of Open Access (OA) journals in Nature and its sibling journals. The corresponding OA publication fee (charged directly to the authors) was set to €9,500/$11,390/£8,290, an amount that may be well out of reach for researchers with limited financial means. This is especially a problem for researchers in developing countries, and for early-career researchers on small, personal fellowships. Funding agencies often demand that research be published under an OA license, forcing authors to accept the high publication fees.