Across Ireland, health and social care practitioners conduct research to help improve patient services, inform policy, and enhance community education. OHRIN exists to support those researchers and make those insights visible by publishing this research openly, rigorously, and at no cost to authors or readers. It will do so through its Diamond OA journal currently in development. Its new membership group will build a supportive community around open research practice and publishing for health and social care practitioners, ensuring that they are supported in bringing this work to the public and to academic communities.
OHRIN offers:
- A community of practice to connect with peers, exchange experiences, and learn together.
- Free webinars and training in methods, publishing, and open research.
- Guidance on open licensing, copyright, and data sharing.
- A new Diamond Open Access journal (in development) to provide a peer‑reviewed publication pathway that is free for authors and readers.
OHRIN is funded by the National Open Research Forum (NORF) Open Research Stimulus Fund and delivered in partnership with Trinity College Dublin and the HSE, with additional partners including the ICGP, Lenus Irish Health Repository, Irish Open Access Publishers (IOAP), RCSI Library, and UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems.
Why now?
Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research (2022-2030) sets the ambitious goal of supporting a sustainable and inclusive course to 100% open access to publications by 2030 via NORF funding. This national direction aligns with a broader European shift toward community‑led, not‑for‑profit publishing, including the launch of the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) in 2025 to federate services and quality standards for Diamond OA journals across languages and disciplines. OHRIN’s mission aligns with these broader movements towards community-focused knowledge that is not just more open but also more equitable. It allows different types of research come to the fore more easily by publishing at no cost to authors, especially those without access to academic affiliations, while also allowing readers to access this crucial knowledge without any cost barriers.
Why Diamond Open Access for practitioner‑led research?
Diamond OA removes article processing charges (APCs) entirely, eliminating a major barrier for practitioner‑researchers without academic affiliations who may not have grant budgets or institutional APC funds. It is owned and managed by the scholarly and public sector community, emphasising quality, equity, and transparency over profit.
Diamond OA also aligns with national recommendations to support multilingual and multicultural scholarly communities, strengthen positive research culture, and repurpose savings from pay‑to‑read/pay‑to‑publish deals toward open, shared infrastructure.
Diamond OA is one component of the ongoing push towards all-things open access in Ireland. The National Action Plan also emphasises rights retention, repository alignment, PID roadmaps, and responsible research assessment, all of which OHRIN will support in practical, practitioner‑friendly ways.
What OHRIN will do (and how we’ll do it)
1) A practitioner‑centred publishing pathway (Diamond OA Journal)
Our Diamond OA journal will embody international quality standards and backed by national policy requirements on rights retention, metadata, accessibility and preservation.
Building on recommendations from PublishOA, a NORF‑funded pilot that compared platforms and recommended Open Journal Systems (OJS) for journals, we are developing a credible, zero‑fee, peer‑reviewed route tailored to practitioner research, with support for indexing, open licenses, PIDs, harvesting to repositories, and preservation.
2) Skills, guidance, and hands‑on support
We’ll offer concise, targeted training:
- Designing and publishing practice‑based studies;
- Choosing open licenses and retaining rights;
- Data sharing with ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’ and FAIR data good practice, including where to deposit sensitive data.
These align with Ireland’s national actions on training networks, data stewardship, and repository alignment, making it easy for practitioners to comply without extra bureaucracy or worrying about where to find advice and guidance.
3) Recognition that values practitioner contribution
We’ll promote and model responsible assessment, encouraging recognition for peer review, data/software sharing, and engaged research, not just counts of journal articles or traditional metrics.
4) Community and discovery
Beyond the journal, we’ll help to build and strengthen a research community amongst practitioners across Ireland, which will work together to publicise practitioner research for greater societal impact.
How this advances Ireland’s national goals
By lowering barriers to publish and read practitioner research, OHRIN directly contributes to Ireland’s 2030 vision of 100% OA, expands much needed bibliodiversity regarding the types of research being published, and supports open, trustworthy scholarly communication without shifting publishing costs onto practitioners. Through Diamond OA standards and EU metadata harvesting, OHRIN helps Ireland connect into coordinated, high‑quality, multilingual research capacity across Europe, ensuring visibility for Irish practitioner research across the world.
Join us
Whether you are a GP, nurse, public health professional, social worker, manager, or researcher in health and social care, if you are conducting any type of research with or without an academic affiliation, either at work or independently, OHRIN is a membership group for you.
- Become a member (free): connect with colleagues, access events and guidance, and help shape the journal and training.
- Propose a webinar or case clinic: share your expertise or a publishing challenge you’d like to solve with peers.
- Nominate a pilot article or series: bring your practice‑based inquiry to an open, peer‑reviewed audience, free to publish and free to read.