Press release

12 March 2021, Dallas – A new agreement has been announced today providing for a broad set of higher education institutions, across the South Central and Southwest Regions of the United States, to support vital open access library infrastructure at a substantial discount.

The partnership, between the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Amigos Library Services, which has among its membership more than 300 higher education institutions, is the largest US based consortium that DOAJ has forged a partnership with, covering Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.  Amigos brings this opportunity to support open access infrastructure to a very broad set of colleges and universities.

As a free and independent database, DOAJ indexes over 16,000 peer-reviewed, open access journals from around the world. COVID-19 has highlighted the critical importance of vetted, high-quality online academic research and demand for essential open access library infrastructure, such as DOAJ, has significantly increased.

Despite growing support for open access publishing, research and data, an urgent need exists to secure the future of vital open access infrastructure. Today’s agreement will help to contribute to the  financial sustainability for DOAJ, an open access service that is key to the future of science and research in the USA and beyond.

“This important alliance between DOAJ and Amigos highlights the significance of open access infrastructure to libraries in research institutions across the world. We are delighted to partner with Amigos as we work together to further open access scholarly publishing and support future generations of researchers” said Lars Bjørnshauge, DOAJ Founder and Managing Director.

“We hope that this partnership between Amigos Library Services and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) will ease the path for libraries’ support of open access and more sustainable scholarly communications. We appreciate this opportunity from DOAJ to build on library consortia’s efforts to collectively improve the library and information landscape,” said Miguel Figueroa, President and CEO of Amigos Library Services.

About Amigos Library Services 

Amigos is one of the largest consortia of libraries and cultural heritage institutions in the United States. For more than 40 years, Amigos members have collaborated to obtain affordable services and shared library resources and knowledge. Through membership in Amigos, libraries collectively gain access to the latest innovations and services in the library community; pursue opportunities for continuing professional education; and leverage their buying power. This collaboration strengthens each member’s ability to serve and lead its community in the creative and effective use of information resources. www.amigos.org

About DOAJ

DOAJ is a community curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer reviewed journals.  DOAJ deploys more than one hundred carefully selected volunteers from among the community of library and other academic disciplines to assist in the curation of open access journals. This independent database contains over 16,000 peer-reviewed open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities. DOAJ is financially supported worldwide by libraries, publishers and other like-minded organizations. DOAJ services (including the evaluation of journals) are free for all, and all data provided by DOAJ are harvestable via OAI/PMH and the API. See https://doaj.org/ for more information.

Contact

DOAJ – Louise Stoddard, Public Relations Officer – louise@doaj.org

Amigos Library Services – Tracy Rochow Byerly, Chief Programs Officer – byerly@amigos.org

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