Ambassador Programme Review

From January until September 2024, our Ambassador Programme has undergone an internal review to ensure that our programme meets our strategic goals and priorities and that we are supporting our Ambassadors in the best possible way. As we have come to the end of the review, we wanted to let our community know what’s going to change and what you can expect to see from our Ambassador Programme in 2025 onwards!

Why review the Ambassador Programme?

The DOAJ Ambassador Programme was launched in 2016, and has grown organically since its inception. Eight years of organic growth has led to a lot of fantastic collaborations, projects and outreach activities.This was an excellent opportunity to take stock, identify where the programme had been most successful and where it could be improved, and ensure that it is adequately resourced for a changing open access landscape.

When the Ambassador Programme launched, it also set out assisting the reapplication project as a key part of the Ambassador role. After the reapplication programme came to a conclusion in 2017, the tasks linked to assessing applications that were conducted by Ambassadors continued to develop organically. Between 2018 and 2022, 13 Ambassadors were recruited, though with somewhat different tasks than those who joined the programme in 2016. Ensuring that the Ambassador role is clear both to our community and our Ambassadors has therefore been an important priority that we wanted to address with this review.

What did the review entail?

We put together a team of four DOAJ team members and Ambassadors to conduct the review; Ina Smith (DOAJ Ambassador Southern Africa and leading the Ambassador Review), Ivonne Lujano (DOAJ Community Manager and Ambassador Latin America), Kamel Belhamel (DOAJ Managing Editor and Ambassador MENA) and Katrine Sundsbø (DOAJ Community Manager). During the review, the group explored existing documentation and resources, collected data via a survey and focus groups with existing Ambassadors and interviewed external stakeholders and organisations with similar volunteering outreach programmes. 

After reviewing all the collected data, documents and experiences, the team wrote up an internal report with recommendations that were reviewed by DOAJ’s Executive team and then reviewed by the DOAJ team as a whole. 

What are the outcomes? 

The Ambassador Programme Review has concluded with a lot of significant changes, mostly linked to how the programme is supported within DOAJ. This includes how the management of the programme is structured as well as regions the Ambassador Programme will be covering. 

One of the biggest changes is to the regions covered by the programme and what the role entails. It’s important to reiterate that the initial aim of the Ambassador role was outreach and assisting in reviewing applications due to the reapplication project that concluded in 2017. Since then, some Ambassadors have taken on volunteering roles as Associate Editors or continued to advise their local communities on applications, whereas others have focused more on outreach activities. We are redefining the Ambassador role to be purely based on outreach, engagement and training activities with local communities. In addition, the Ambassador Programme will only operate in LMICs (Low-Middle-Income Countries). As the programme has developed organically, it has gone beyond the original geographical coverage of the global south. DOAJ’s strategic goals are aligned to equity and diversity, and deciding to align the programme to LMICs means our resources are focused on those regions that are in need of support and the Ambassador programme will be aligned with our core values of supporting a fairer, more inclusive, global open scholarship ecosystem.

This refocusing to only LMICs means that not all of our previous Ambassadors will be continuing. We are extremely grateful for the work they have done for DOAJ and open access publishing in general during the time they have volunteered for DOAJ. 

In 2025, we will expand the Ambassador programme to include more LMIC regions. We will specifically be looking for individuals who speak Portuguese from Latin America, individuals who speak French in Central, East or West Africa and someone from Ukraine to join as a DOAJ Ambassador. More information about these opportunities will be available in 2025.

The programme will also see the appointment of three Senior Ambassadors to manage Latin America, Africa and MENA, and Asia as separate regions of the programme. Senior Ambassadors will be recruited internally from current Ambassadors, and will be using their local knowledge and experience to guide and lead projects within the region. 

In the future, the Ambassador Programme will take a more project-based approach. Each Ambassador will work with us to identify a project for the next year, where DOAJ will support specific work with local institutions, communities and organisations to increase awareness, engagement and ensure eligible journals from LMIC are indexed in DOAJ.

2025 as a pilot year

We are implementing these changes in the remainder of 2024, and in 2025 our Ambassador Programme will run as a pilot to ensure that the changes are sustainable and will help the programme thrive. We are looking forward to updating our community with exciting developments, showcasing Ambassador projects and continuing to focus on increasing the diversity of our index.