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  1. CRYSTAL CLEAR CRITERIA PLEASE!

    “… little information is provided about how the various criteria will be weighted, and it appears that the decisions will be substantially subjective.
    (Anderson 2014)

    “new [DOAJ] management will presumably need to remove some of the journals in its database. This would likely spark further guerrilla warfare, or at least angry exchanges and bad feeling. Moreover, it would still appear to leave OA publishers in an undesirable binary world of good and bad. Either they are in the DOAJ, or they are out of it. And since the DOAJ is a Western-based initiative, suspicions will surely remain that the process is discriminatory.” (Poynder 2013)

    I worked on a List of Criteria for journals to get into DOAJ based on the Application Form.(Comment 2014-05-22) However, DOAJ in an email: “… we are in a difficult position re a list of basic criteria: if we published one, it would be open to abuse”.

    Thanks to DOAJ for adding the section „What is the procedure for a journal being accepted into DOAJ?“ Thanks also for easing the wording in some places that sparked suspicion as expressed above. What is the process?

    A)
    To get into DOAJ the first hurdle is to pass the requirements in “What are the basic standards that a journal must meet for the application to be considered?”. “A journal must meet the following basic standards for an application to be considered. Meeting these standards does not guarantee a successful application.“ (http://doaj.org/faq#standards) Only after passing this test the Application Form will be looked at by DOAJ in more detail.

    B)
    Next is: “What is the procedure for a journal being accepted into DOAJ?” (http://doaj.org/faq#procedure) It says at the bottom: “We will also look for examples of Best Practice.“ No link is given, but „Best Practice“ seems to refer to „Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing“. (http://doaj.org/bestpractice) 16 points are given called „Principles of Transparency“. There are also the “Good practice guidelines for Open Access publishers”. (http://doaj.org/publishers)

    Unfortunately, questions remain and remarks are necessary.

    1.)
    At the bottom of the „Principles of Transparency“ is the text „In the event that a member organization is found to have violated these best practices, … membership … may be … terminated.“
    QUESTION: Who is a member of DOAJ? Who’s membership is terminated? Or, who is denied access? The publisher (with all its journals) or the single journal that applied?

    2.)
    “15. Archiving: A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content”. According to an email from DOAJ this has to be understood like this: “We encourage all publishers to state their plan but if they are already executing that plan then they get the [DOAJ] Seal.”
    REMARK: This means archiving is not mandatory. It is sufficient to have a plan that may lead in e.g. 5 years to some sort of archiving. For me not the correct interpretation of no 15!

    3.)
    a) „Quality: The journal must exercise quality control on submitted papers through an editor, [AND] editorial board AND a peer-review system.“ (http://doaj.org/faq#standards)
    b) “The journal must have either an editor OR an editorial board“ (http://doaj.org/application/new)
    QUESTION: What is required AND or OR? Note: The OR is exclusive.

    4.)
    Consider Comment 2014-11-26 (link below).
    QUESTION: What can prevent a journal from getting into DOAJ with respect to Impact Factors?

    5.)
    „Applicants are simply encouraged to complete the form clearly and honestly. If you do not know the answer to a question, you can request help by contacting us.“ (http://doaj.org/application/new) DOAJ has not the time anymore to answer questions. It is also not efficient to answer so many questions.
    REMARK: “Qustions are not Criteria!” One simple example should explain this: „10) Contact’s email address“. We know from Beall: Questionable is: „The publishers’ officers use email addresses that end in .gmail.com, yahoo.com some other free email supplier“. I can only guess that such a stupid criterion is not applied at DOAJ, but I DO NOT KNOW!

    6.)
    DOAJ refused to look at the application and asked a publisher to show “transparency and openness”.
    QUESTION: What kind of transparency? „Principles of Transparency“ or “Transparent editorial boards”? (http://doaj.org/publishers) A physical address? A phone number? The business plan online? (Beall) The tax declaration online? (Beall) DOAJ: If you want to help, more details please! What is missing?

    7.)
    A publisher was asked to show OASPA membership first before the application can be looked at!
    QUESTION: DOAJ, can you decide on your own?

    CRYSTAL CLEAR CRITERIA PLEASE! NO DISCRIMINATION PLEASE!

    REFERENCES

    ANDERSON, Rick, 2014: Housecleaning at the Directory of Open Access Journals. In: The Scholarly Kitchen. 14.08.2014 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/08/14/housecleaning-at-the-directory-of-open-access-journals/

    COMMENT from 2014-05-22: https://doajournals.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/doaj-publishes-lists-of-journals-removed-and-added/comment-page-1/#comment-2

    COMMENT from 2014-11-26: http://doajournals.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/update-on-our-reapplication-process/comment-page-1/#comment-154

    POYNDER, Richard, 2013: The OA Interviews: Ashry Aly of Ashdin Publishing. 2013-01-17. Available from: http://poynder.blogspot.de/2013/01/the-oa-interviews-ashry-aly-of-ashdin.html