November 2023
A new agreement has been announced today between the National Library of Sweden on behalf of the Bibsam Consortium participating organisations and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). This agreement will make it easier for research institutions in Sweden to provide crucial support to the key and widely used open infrastructure DOAJ.
Stakeholders within the Bibsam Consortium have been at the forefront of the Swedish goal of 100% immediate open access to all publicly funded research, and have been clear in their commitment to a transformation to open access in their work on negotiating agreements with publishers. Teaming up with DOAJ to make supporting this crucial open infrastructure easy for Swedish libraries is both a huge statement of their commitment to open access publishing and a validation of DOAJ’s work to make open access the norm.
“This agreement, intended to support the vital work DOAJ performs in indexing open access journals, aligns with the recent EU Council conclusions, encouraging investment in interoperable, not-for-profit publishing infrastructures. This collaboration marks a crucial step towards supporting these infrastructures that help unlock knowledge for everyone,” said Anna Lundén, Director, Department for Collaboration, National Library of Sweden.
“This new consortial agreement with Sweden is particularly special for DOAJ in its 20th year,” said Joanna Ball, DOAJ’s Managing Director. “DOAJ was launched and hosted at Lund University Libraries in 2003 by Lars Bjørnshauge. We are grateful for the longstanding support from the Swedish library community and are very pleased with this joint effort to co-ordinate support from 2024.”
About Bibsam
The National Library of Sweden has, since 1996, negotiated licence agreements for electronic information resources and publishing agreements on behalf of Swedish universities and university colleges, as well as public agencies and research institutes.
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 the community of library and other academic disciplines to assist in curating open access journals. This independent database contains over 20,000 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.
Contact:
Bibsam Consortium – Britt-Marie Wideberg, Head of Licensing britt-marie.wideberg@kb.se
DOAJ – Katrine Sundsbø, Community Manager – katrine@doaj.org
