Month: May 2014

A note about Reapplications

Eventually, about 99.3% of all the journals that are currently indexed in DOAJ will have to reapply to ensure that they meet the new criteria requested by the application form. With our technical partners, Cottage Labs, we are developing a system that will make the reapplication process as easy as possible. It will allow reapplications for both single journals and for a group of journals (for those publishers with more than 10 journals).

Until that process is in place (Autumn 2014), we request that editors and publishers DO NOT fill out the new application form as we will be unable to match the new application to an existing record. It is vital that we can make this match for several reasons:

  1. Article metadata: if the journal already provides article metadata to us, there is no way to match the new application to the existing metadata.
  2. Discoverability: each journal has a unique URL in DOAJ. This URL is indexed in search engines and can be bookmarked by users. A new application cannot be matched to the same URL.
  3. Versioning: the reapplication process will create a new version of the existing record, allowing the old (now invalid) journal entry to be overwritten. It is important that this happens so that a journal only has ONE entry and it is most-up-to-date.

Until further notice, all reapplications by journals already in DOAJ will be automatically rejected. We kindly ask our publishers and editors to please wait until we announce that reapplications are open.

DOAJ publishes lists of journals removed and added

One of our improved services to the community is increased transparency. Accordingly, we have decided to publish a list of the journals added to and removed from our directory.

Read the list. [Opens in new tab/window.]

The lists are split over two tabs of the same spreadsheet.

The list of journals removed starts from the beginning of the 2014. Because we were undergoing development, we were unable to ADD new journals for the first quarter of this year. However, we were able to remove journals so, as part of our regular weeding and reviewing, a good number of journals were removed during this time. The list includes journal title, ISSN, date removed and the reason.

The list of journals added starts from 19th March 2014. ALL the journals added after this date have met the NEW criteria as required by our new application form. You can read our press release from 19th March 2014. The list includes journal title, ISSN and date added.

[UPDATE: this document now contains a third sheet/tab showing a list of rejected applications.]

So that the community can easily recognise those journals that have met the new criteria, we will mark them with this symbol:

DOAJ accepted logo

Denotes those journals that have been accepted into DOAJ based on the new, extended criteria

The symbol will appear alongside a journal title in search results and on a journal’s Issues page. We will make further announcements when we are ready with this feature.

As ever, get in touch if you have questions!

 

UPDATED: 28th August 2014

DOAJ wins the Pérez Ugena Prize

We are absolutely delighted that DOAJ has received the Pérez Ugena Prize for our contribution to Open Access Journals and science and communication.

The prize is awarded by the Sociedad Latina de Comunicación Social, a non-profit scientific association that edits the journal Revista Latina de Comunicación Social.

Our Managing Director and founder, Lars Bjørnshauge, was invited to attend the 4th Conferencia internacional sobre calidad de revistas de ciencias sociales y humanidades (CRECS 2014) in Madrid, to collect the award in person. You can read his slides on Slidehshare.

DOAJ is honoured to be awarded such a prestigious award and we thank the Society for the recognition of our work.

The Perez Ugena award

Perez Ugena Award, awarded to DOAJ in 2014

Welcome to the DOAJ news service

Welcome!

This news service will bring you all the latest news and developments from DOAJ and our work at the centre of the open access community.

We will keep you informed on our work as we expand our features, functionality, and teams of dedicated volunteers across the globe.

You can get in touch here if you have questions or comments. We would love to hear from you.

Dom Mitchell, Community Manager