When we reject an application, the rejection email contains details about why the application was not successful and usually tells applicants that they must wait 6 months before submitting another application for the same journal to us. Why do we do this?
One reason is that it is an attempt to discourage repeat applications, made in haste, and we get many, many of those. Repeat and duplicate applications clog up the system and take our dedicated volunteers and team away from those applications which need some time spent on them. (In 10 months alone, DOAJ received 221 duplicate applications!)
The other reason is that many of the recommendations that we make in our rejection emails, recommendations made to help journals meet our criteria, take time to implement. Adding words to a website isn’t enough. Changes need to be implemented properly, communicated to stakeholders, tested, and managed. Some changes will require other parties to implement changes too. This all takes time. After the 6 months has passed, we welcome a new application but we ask that the journal website demonstrates very clearly that our recommendations have been put into practice and our editorial team will be very careful to check that all our recommendations have been implemented.
Hi, this is Karan Kumar, from New Delhi, India. I have serious and important question regarding indexing OA Journals to DOAJ. I have observed that many gold oa journals published in India are not found in DOAJ database. the journals i am talking about are scholarly in nature and published by reputed organisations. For example, Indian Academy of Sciences publishes 13 journals which supposed to come in GOLD journals category. But unfortunately, non of them are indexed in your database. The URL to the website is-https://www.ias.ac.in/Journals/Overview/. Why is it so??? Please let me know as early as possible.
I am a research scholar and doing study on OA journals. so your early reply would be highly appreciated.
Regards,
karan kumar
Dear Karan,
Thank you for your comment. There are many different reasons why journals are not included in DOAJ. It may be that those journals have never applied to be in DOAJ (publishers, editors must submit an application), or that they once applied but did not meet DOAJ’s criteria for acceptance. Another reason is that after applying, we never heard from the applicant. If you think that these journals are worthy of inclusion in DOAJ, do please ask them to submit applications to us: https://doaj.org/application/new
Best wishes, Dom
DOAJ Operations Manager