Our Ambassador Yanhong Zhai has translated our flyers into Chinese. Please use them to promote DOAJ and Open Access!
Chinese flyer 1 – This A5 flyer provides general information about DOAJ.
Chinese flyer 2 – This A5 flyer gives a summary of our Ambassador programme.
We are very happy to share our promotional materials in French and Spanish.
They can be accessed here:
Please promote Open Access and DOAJ! Thank you.
DOAJ is often asked for materials to help librarians and open access advocates to spread the word about open access and DOAJ.
We would like to announce that you can now access, share, and use our new promotional materials.
We have produced two flyers and a poster for you to use as you need:
Flyer 1 -This A5 flyer provides general information about DOAJ:
Flyer 2 -This A5 flyer gives a summary of our Ambassador programme:
Poster – The A2 poster is a mixture of general info and the Ambassador programme.
Please promote Open Access and DOAJ! Thank you.
We are very pleased to announce that Couperin, the French national academic consortium, has agreed to support DOAJ. Currently 47 of the Couperin members have signed up and more are underway.
Couperin.org is a national academic consortium with more than 250 members: Universities and higher education schools, research performing agencies, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, museums, hospitals etc. Couperin.org is one of the most important and active consortia with more than 110 agreements signed every year.
Their department of prospective and services provides members with valuable services and is very committed in promoting and advocating Open access in France.
Sandrine Malotaux (Head of Documentary Negotiations Department): DOAJ is one of the most valuable initiatives launched in the last 15 years: a simple and effective infrastructure, considerably helpful to librarians, researchers, authors and publishers.
It provides the most up-to-date and thorough information and promotes Open Access in the most efficient way – no frills and impeccable. Couperin.org is very proud to support DOAJ.
This is a guest post by Xin Bi, DOAJ Ambassador, China.
Following rapid development in the economy and huge investment in R&D, China is now widely recognised as one of the leading countries of the world in terms of the number of published journals and scientific articles. In 2015, there were over 10,000 journals in China, of which 4983 (49.76%) were in Science and Technology, according to the “Statistical Data of Chinese Science and Technology Papers 2015”.
Surprisingly, as of 4 June 2017, only 71 open access journals from China have been registered in DOAJ, which is about 0.75% of the total number of DOAJ indexed journals. If we take 10,000 as the estimated total number of journals in China at this moment, then this suggests only 0.71% of journals in China are open access. From these data people would think the open access movement in China is really lagging behind. Is this true? Does this actually means that Chinese scholars or publishers are not willing to share? The answer is no.
Though it is still in progress, my research on open access publishing in China now means that I have collated a list containing information on more than 1200 journals and I am checking many items of journal information against DOAJ criteria. The findings are quite exciting. I have not finished checking each journal, so I just provide my initial findings here.
Nearly no questionable journals found
In my list there are 1222 journals and the number is still increasing. As only state-owned organizations, such as universities, institutes, academic societies, government bodies and hospitals, are licensed to create a journal, among all the journals in my list, there are no questionable journals found. For any individual it is not possible to register a new journal in China. Some journals are registered overseas, with editorial offices in China, but as they only have one ISSN number and they could not be licensed with a CN series publication number from the Chinese authorities, these journals are not recognized in the academic system in China.
Open as free access
It is surprising to see that many Chinese journals are offering free reading and downloading of their current articles on their website. This could be something we call “free access” rather than true open access according to the BOAI definition and DOAJ practice. In my experience working as a DOAJ ambassador in China, making articles freely available in this way would be regarded as “open access” by many publishers and editors. There could possibly be 1,000 or so journals in my list that are applying this free access practice, as a best estimation at this moment. So we are actually quite open to sharing academic articles in China and editors and scholars are contributing to the open access movement.
Published in Chinese
Due to developments in technology, traditional print journals are now able to release their articles in both print and online format. But, although all the journals studied have a website, nearly all are in Chinese only, both for their website and articles and even abstracts. Making articles online for free access would definitely increase the impact of journals and that is one of the major motives for journal editors. So it is easily understandable that these journals were born in Chinese and their presence online is still in Chinese. However this makes the content only accessible for Chinese speakers in the world.
Some with embargo
Another common misunderstanding of open access in China is the accepted practice of imposing an embargo. As the majority of journals in China still operate under a subscription model for their print version, a period of embargo would certainly be beneficial for the journal, as the editorial office might still rely on the subscription fee of print journals to fund the publishing operation. I could not report an accurate percentage of embargoed free access journals but the feeling is that quite a large number of journals do have embargo policies in place.
Business model exploration
It was interesting to find that, though the number is very small among the 1200 journals in my list, some journals did cease to update their website with full text articles while keeping the site updated with news, announcements and even the table of contents or abstracts of the current issue. This may reflect the exploration of business models in recent years, as people embrace the open access idea but at the same time face financial challenges on sustainability. So some journals have changed back to a pure subscription model, using the website as a way to showcase the journal and increase awareness.
A very small number of journals are collaborating with commercial journal database vendors in China. While these journals provide extensive information online about the journal, for example, editorial boards, instructions to authors, current issue and archive article lists and even abstracts, access to the full text is directed to the commercial journal databases which then generally charge for the downloading of articles. Such commercial agreements would be likely to make a journal hesitate before converting to a free or open access model.
No open access statement and copyright statement
If there could be a clear statement of adherence to the BOAI definition of open access and adoption of Creative Common copyright licenses by Chinese journals, then we would be confident to say that we have quite a large number of open access journals in China, and to be able to increase the number of Chinese journals in DOAJ. However, this will require time and effort to communicate with editors to adopt best practices in academic open access publishing. As only state-owned bodies can be licensed to publish a journal, it generally means that the journals are managed by owners who are not publishers, the editorial office is often quite small and it is hard to make the move to a pure OA model. In fact, having so many free access journals in China is already quite a big step.
New model of creating open access journals in English
Of the 71 Chinese journals already indexed in DOAJ, 25 of them are published by Elsevier and 7 by Springer. This reflects a new model in academic publishing in China where a university, research institute or hospital could create an English-language journal in partnership with a big brand publisher. With platform and technology support from the publisher as well as funding for the publishing operation, these newly established journals can apply standard open access practice from the very beginning, and usually the publisher rather than the editorial office will then apply for inclusion in DOAJ.
In general, the Chinese government is encouraging sharing, innovative, green and sustainable principles in both economic and social development. The open access publishing model is seen as the trend for the future by editors, scholars, librarians and publishers in China. Due to the different understanding of what is truly an open access journal, there is still work to do in the community in China to move forward to achieve our goals.
References
This is a guest post by Vrushali Dandawate, DOAJ Ambassador, India.
All over the world researchers are spending their time in writing research papers, and everyone wants his or her work to be widely recognised. Most of the time researchers are in a hurry to publish their research papers, so they may not pay attention to whether they are publishing in a proper journal. Unintentionally many researchers are submitting their research papers to questionable journals (also known as predatory journals).
1. You may get spam emails or marketing materials from the editor inviting you to publish a paper in their journals.
2. These journals give you a guarantee to publish your paper within a very limited time period.
3. No proper information is given on journal peer review policy.
4. No affiliations are provided for editorial board members, and sometimes editors are listed without their knowledge or permission
5. These journals may not be dedicated to one discipline, but instead publish on a wide range of subjects within one journal.
What is the solution?
As a researcher, academician or librarian you must be able to identify questionable publications.
There are guidelines, tools and services available to help you to avoid publishing with questionable journals, and to choose a proper journal for your paper.
This website helps researchers to identify appropriate journals in which to publish their research.
2 Directory of Open Access Journals
DOAJ is a curated index of open access peer reviewed journals that is used by institutions all over the world as a guide to trusted journals where you can safely publish your paper.
3 Open Access Journal Platforms
Developing country authors can also choose to publish their article in journals available in aggregation platforms such as African Journals Online (AJOL), SciELO and Redalyc. Journals are evaluated according to a number of criteria regarding their publishing practices before they can be included in AJOL.
4 AuthorAID
AuthorAID is working to increase the success rate of developing country researchers in achieving publication, and to increase the visibility and influence of research in the developing world. AuthorAID achieves these objectives through networking, resources, training and mentoring. Membership is free, and you can find a mentor through the AuthorAID database or by asking the AuthorAID discussion list about experiences of particular journals.
Find a mentor to publish your research
http://www.authoraid.info/en/mentoring/
References
http://scielo.org/php/index.php?lang=en
http://www.inasp.info/en/work/authoraid/
We are happy to announce that we have improved the features of our xml validation. As an article XML is uploaded to DOAJ from the publisher area we will check to see if the uploaded file meets a number of criteria:
