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### Why the committee is needed
You have likely already heard of the growing sentiment against exploitative practices in science publishing. In the current system, universities pay unjustly high fees to journals for publishing and subscriptions, while researchers are providing free and largely undocumented labor in the form of peer review and editorial work. Many desire to change this, but at an individual level, the most effective course of action is unclear or could potentially impact one’s career.

Changing the status quo can only be achieved with collective action, from researchers, universities, and grant funders. In 2023, [editors at Neuroimage](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01391-5) already resigned in protest against exorbitant Open Access publishing fees. Collective action at this scale is certainly the most impactful, but we also believe that we can achieve change by building consensus between individual researchers as well. As an example, we are working on inviting scientists to sign a pledge to publish at least one paper in a Diamond Open Access journal in the coming five years, which can serve as a stepping stone to inviting them to make bigger commitments, allowing us to reach a critical mass of support that cannot be ignored.
Changing the status quo can only be achieved with collective action, from researchers, universities, and grant funders. In 2023, [editors at Neuroimage](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01391-5) already resigned in protest against exorbitant Open Access publishing fees. Collective action at this scale is certainly the most impactful, but we also believe that we can achieve change by building consensus between individual researchers as well.

### A new concerted effort
In its original conception, Free Our Knowledge invited the scientific community to support different campaigns aimed at organizing collective action, and to create their own campaigns for others to support. However, we have observed that the success of this approach depends on the efforts and initiatives of individual researchers who are already, as noted, uncoordinated. For this reason, Free Our Knowledge is refocusing on promoting a single collective action campaign, one that is focused on publishing in a Diamond Open Access journal. We aim to make this pledge achievable and impactful, with the aim of building broad support for the concept so that future collective action initiatives will be able to build on its success.
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