DOAJ volunteers: Rasoul, Natalia and Mario

DOAJ has over 100 volunteers who contribute their time and skills to reviewing applications. We are grateful for the work that our volunteers do, as editors and associate editors, supporting Open Access principles at home in their day to day work and abroad. 

DOAJ volunteers come from all over the world, from a variety of backgrounds, and speak many languages. In this blog post, we’ve checked in with three of them to learn more about their backgrounds and motivations for volunteering with DOAJ.

Hello, Rasoul! Tell us about your background and your experience volunteering with DOAJ.

Greetings, I am Rasoul Zavaraqi, an Iranian husband and father to a son and daughter residing in Tabriz. I hold a degree from the University of Tehran in Knowledge and Information Science. My PhD thesis focused on visualizing and interpreting the intellectual structure of  science in Iran.

Currently, I serve as a faculty member and associate professor at the University of Tabriz in the Department of Knowledge and Information Science. I have been an editor for the Farsi group at DOAJ since 2014, collaborating with several managing editors and associate editors to review and index numerous Iranian Farsi journals.

My interests lie in promoting Open Access to scientific literature, as demonstrated by my research and supervision of a PhD dissertation on intellectual property and Creative Commons licenses within DOAJ. I also lead the Central Library, Documentation, and Publication Center at the University of Tabriz, while serving on various committees and councils within the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Iran. I am proud to contribute to esteemed publications such as the International Journal of Information Science and Management, Research on Information Science and Public Libraries, and the Journal of Knowledge-Research Studies. Moreover, I hold the esteemed title of Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Knowledge-Research Studies.

Hello, Natalia! Tell us about your background and your experience volunteering with DOAJ.

Hi, I’m Natalia Pamuła. I’ve been working with DOAJ as a volunteer of the Polish group since 2014 (it’s been over 10 years together, wow!). The decision to join the volunteer group was an attempt to test myself outside of my work at the university, because since 2003 I’ve been a researcher at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. I currently work there as an assistant professor at the Institute of Information and Communication Research. 

DOAJ gave me a breath of fresh air. I learned many valuable things about the publishing process of high-quality scientific journals, the open access model and changes in the paradigm of scientific communication. Initially, I was an Assistant Editor and my tasks included reviewing and checking submissions of Polish journals to the database. I am currently an Editor of the Polish1 group, which involves additional duties – contacting other volunteers in the group and coordinating the group with the Managing Editor.

Thanks to my activities in DOAJ, I undertook new research, and a large part of my scientific achievements concern open access. I had the opportunity to participate in many scientific conferences, workshops and trainings that also involved DOAJ. Thanks to this, I managed to meet Dominic Mitchell twice in Poland. But in reality, I’ve been with DOAJ from the beginning. I used the service to search for information during my studies. It is also one of the basic search tools that I show to students of Information Architecture and PhD
students at NCU as part of my classes.

My current research focuses on the perception of open access among the Polish academic community, as well as building social resistance to disinformation among various social groups. For more information about my publications, I refer you to my Google Scholar
profile.

Hello, Mario! Tell us about your background and your experience volunteering with DOAJ.

I am Mario Alejandro Marín, an entomologist researcher and professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín. I started as a volunteer at the DOAJ in February 2020, and since then, I have learned many aspects of the importance of open access and transparency in research communication. My work with DOAJ focuses on journals published in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, mainly from Brazil and Portugal, in different scientific areas such as medicine, engineering, and social and natural sciences. My work in DOAJ has allowed me to teach my students about predatory journals, the importance of open access, and transparency in research.

My expertise is in ecology and entomology; I am an agronomic engineer with a Master’s in Entomology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín. In 2014, I moved to Brazil to study for my PhD in Ecology at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). I finished in 2018 and worked at UNICAMP as a researcher until 2022 when I returned to Colombia to work at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellín.

Currently, my research focuses on studying the evolution and diversification of moths and butterflies, with a focus on evolution and diversification. I have two key research objectives. The first is to study the diversification, biogeography, and delimitation of butterfly species complexes in the Amazon and Andean regions. To achieve this, I’m using a diverse range of evidence, including DNA, morphology, ecology, and geographical distribution. The second objective is to study the geographic distribution patterns and genetic and phylogenetic diversity of High Andean butterflies. This research aims to understand how these communities are structured in anthropic and natural landscapes, providing a comprehensive view of their diversity and distribution.

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