DOAJ operates without grant funding, relying on ongoing and collective community support to ensure open access research remains visible, discoverable, and trusted worldwide. In this post, Managing Director Joanna Ball provides a fundraising and collaboration update for 2025.
At DOAJ, sustainability isn’t just a strategic priority, it’s a daily concern. As a small team running a global service, we operate without grant funding, relying instead on collective investment from our community. Continuing our transparent approach to posting our finances publicly, and following the POSI principles, the latest financial figures are now available for year-end 2024.
The pressure on our service continues to rise. Last year, we received a record number of journal applications, and the size of the database continues to grow by around 1500 journals a year. This growth is positive, but it comes with a cost: it requires ongoing curation and editorial review to ensure that the journals in our index continue to meet our standards and retain their trusted status.
We are therefore delighted to announce the following additional investors for 2025:
25 library supporters: AgroParisTech, American University of Beirut, Coastal Carolina University, Collège de France, Colorado School of Mines, Hillsborough Community College, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Horry-Georgetown Technical College, Mid Sweden University Library, Nantes Université, Piedmont Technical College, Royal Roads University, Staats- und Universitaetsbibliotek Bremen, Tri-County Technical College, University of Colorado Boulder, University of North British Columbia, University of South Carolina – Beaufort, University of South Carolina – Columbia, University of Technology Sydney, University of Texas at Austin, Universität Greifswald Universitätsbibliothek, Universitätsbibliothek Kassel, Universitätsbibliothek Marburg and Université de l’Ontario Français.
Library consortia. We have also continued to develop relationships with consortia to share our commitment to open access and trusted infrastructure. We are particularly pleased to have entered into new agreements with Baden-Württemberg and HEBIS in Germany, and PASCAL in the United States. We hope to be able to announce additional collaborations for 2026.
Publishers and data user supporters. We are pleased to welcome AIP, SOBIAD, SpringerNature and Zhejiang University Press.
Funders. We have entered into an agreement with the German Research Foundation to support SeDOA, the new diamond capacity centre and diamond open access journals in Germany.
We are very grateful to our new and existing supporters for their investment in our service.
These new contributions will allow us to make essential investments in our systems and our team to improve our service.
We recognise that many institutions are currently facing financial pressures, and we are grateful to those who continue to prioritise support for vital open infrastructures like DOAJ.
We also welcome growing recognition of the importance of funding open infrastructure across the community, and are pleased to work with the following initiatives:
SCOSS and Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) continue to highlight the urgent need for sustainable investment.
TSOSI (Transparency to Sustain Open Scholarly Infrastructure), a tool funded by the French National Open Science Fund to showcase institutional support for infrastructures like DOAJ.
Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information, which focuses on the sustainability of infrastructures that provide open research information.
Now more than ever, we need open infrastructure that is community-governed, transparent, and sustainable. If your library or organisation uses or promotes DOAJ’s metadata and services, we urge you to get involved. Every contribution makes a difference, and there is full transparency to what DOAJ uses funds on, as you can see in our latest financial figures.
By supporting DOAJ, you are helping to ensure that open access research remains visible, discoverable, and trusted, for everyone, everywhere.
