Our metadata includes information on whether a journal charges article processing charges (APCs) and whether there are other fees. Until yesterday, our website didn’t make that difference very clear. As part of improvements to highlight Diamond open access journals, we’ve made this information easier to understand. The metadata we output hasn’t changed.
The metadata that DOAJ collects about journals has always included two different pieces of information:
- Does the journal charge APCs? If so, how much and in which currency?
- Does the journal charge any other kind of fee to authors? (For example, editorial processing charges, language editing fees, colour charges, submission fees, page charges, membership fees, print subscription costs, or other supplementary charges.)
Yesterday, we released an update to our journal search that improves how we show this fee information: now we display in search results whether or not a journal charges other fees:
While we were at it, we brought the homepage statistic of journals with no fees into line with the count on the journal search page. (There was an annoying discrepancy previously where one counted no fees at all and the other counted only journals with no APCs.) Both now show the count for journals that charge no fees at all. The downloadable journal CSV, our API and other endpoints have always shown this difference, so there hasn’t been any change to those.
We’ve made these updates as part of a series of changes to highlight Diamond open-access journals better in our index. We want our users to be even more confident that the journal they find in our search charges absolutely no fees at all.
