Author: DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)

Introducing the Editorial Sub-committee

DOAJ has created an Editorial Subcommittee to provide input into and advice on editorial issues around process and content quality, issues which arise from DOAJ’s day-to-day operations and which require specialist input. The volunteer Subcommittee will operate in an advisory capacity.

Each member has been chosen based on their ability to provide advice to DOAJ in the following areas:

  • medicine
  • life sciences
  • physical sciences
  • social sciences
  • humanities
  • the arts
  • statistics
  • publishing/research ethics

We are delighted to welcome the following experts to the DOAJ:

Professor Carol S Bond, Caring for Lifelong Health Research Centre, UK
Dr. Jocelyn Hipona, Far Eastern University, Philippines
Professor Marc Couture, Canada
Maude Laplante-Dubé, Université Laval, Canada
Dr. Oliver Mendoza-Cano, Universidad de Colima, México
Plinio Casarotto, University of Helsinki, Finland
Rachel Lee, California Digital Library, USA
Stephanie Hull, Emerald Publishing, UK

Further details have been published on the DOAJ website.

 

cOAlition S chooses DOAJ’s technical partner, Cottage Labs, to deliver their Journal Checker Tool

PRESS RELEASE

As announced today, cOAlition S has awarded the tender for the Plan S journal checker tool (JCT) to Cottage Labs LLP, DOAJ’s existing technical partner. Cottage Labs became DOAJ’s technical partner back in 2013. 

The announcement is welcomed by DOAJ. Lars Bjørnshauge, Managing Director and Founder of DOAJ, said: “Working with Cottage Labs on this project means that DOAJ can focus on what it does best: reviewing applications from journals and making sure those continue to move through the system, without us having to spend huge amounts of time explaining how we work, what we do, and why. Cottage Labs already know how we work, understanding the editorial processes and realising the full extent of what we do.” 

The JCT will be a tool built for measuring how a journal meets different requirements under the three different Plan S compliance routes: Gold open access, Green open access, and transformative journals. For Gold open access, being indexed in DOAJ is the baseline criteria. DOAJ already indexes the vast majority of the journals used by cOAlition S-funded authors and already collects information about the two criteria contained in the first iteration of the JCT:

  1. The journal allows the use of a CC BY license on its articles
  2. Copyright is retained by the author

Richard Jones, a founder of Cottage Labs and technical lead for DOAJ, said: “Plan S is a key step forward for the Open Access movement, and DOAJ is central to that.  Our extensive knowledge of DOAJ makes us ideally placed to deliver a high-quality Journal Checker Tool for cOAlition S, and we’re very excited to be a part of it.“

Work on the JCT is expected to commence immediately as cOAlition S are expecting the first iteration of the tool to be publicly available by November. 

For more information:

DOAJ’s Basic criteria – updated and rewritten in plain English

We are rewriting our website in plain English so that it is easy for our users, especially publishers, to understand what is required for a good quality and complete application.

These are first steps to us:

  1. becoming even more open and transparent;
  2. offering a greatly improved user experience for a new application form; 
  3. starting a localisation project to offer elements of the website in languages other than English.

Today the basic criteria are mixed with the advanced criteria on a very wordy page and in our application form. It is hard to tell which is which. The advanced criteria are only required for a journal wishing to get the DOAJ Seal.

This leads many to believe that a journal has to have the Seal to be indexed in DOAJ. This is not true.

So here are our basic criteria – rewritten, updated and offered in simple, clear language. These will soon be available on our website as part of our new ‘Guide to applying’.

Let us know what you think.

The type of journal that can apply

Open access journals published in any language may apply.

  • The journal must be actively publishing scholarly research
    • All research subject areas are accepted
    • Should publish at least 5 research articles per year 
  • The primary target audience should be researchers or practitioners

The type of open access

  • DOAJ only accepts open access journals. 
  • We define these as journals where the copyright holder of a scholarly work grants usage rights to others using an open license (Creative Commons or equivalent) allowing for immediate free access to the work and permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose.
  • The journal must display an open access statement indicating that it fulfils the DOAJ definition of open access.
  • The full text of all content must be available for free and open access without delay
    • No embargo period
    • Requiring users to register to read content is not accepted
    • A charge for the print version of a journal is permitted

The journal website

  • The journal must have its own dedicated URL and homepage that is accessible from any location
  • The website must be clear and easy to navigate
  • The journal  should adhere to the guidelines described in the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
  • Each article must be available as an individual, full-text article
    • one unique URL per article
    • HTML or PDF, as a minimum

The following information must be available online, and easily accessible from the journal homepage: 

  • Open access policy
  • Aims and scope
  • Editorial board (including institutional affiliations of all members)
  • Instructions for authors
  • Editorial process (peer review)
  • Licensing terms
  • Copyright terms
  • Author charges
    • If a journal doesn’t have any charges then this must be stated
    • Must include all fees that may be charged to the author, from submission to publication, including:
      • submission fees
      • editorial processing charges
      • article processing charges (APCs)
      • page charges
      • colour charges
  • Contact details
    • The contact details must include a real name and the journal’s dedicated email address
    • The country in the application and on the journal website must be the country where the publisher is registered and carries out its business activities

ISSN

  • A journal must have at least one ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) which is registered and confirmed at issn.org.
  • The ISSN(s) must be displayed on the website.
  • The name of the journal in the application and on the website must match what is shown at issn.org.

Editorial process

  • A journal must have an editor and an editorial board. 
    • The editorial board must be listed on the website.
    • The name and affiliation of all editors and board members must be included.
    • If the journal is run by a student body, it must have an advisory board of which at least two members have a PhD or equivalent.
  • All articles must pass through a quality control system (peer review) before publication.
    • The type and details of the peer review process must be stated clearly on the website.

Licensing

  • The licensing terms for use and re-use of the published content must be clearly stated on the website.
  • DOAJ recommends the use of Creative Commons licenses for this purpose. 
  • If Creative Commons licensing is not used, similar terms and conditions should be applied.
    • Extra care must be taken to state these terms clearly. 

Copyright

  • The copyright terms applied to the published content must be clearly stated and separate from the copyright terms applied to the website.
  • Copyright terms must not contradict the licensing terms or the terms of the open access policy.
    • “All rights reserved” is never appropriate for open access content.

Footnote

Applications that contain information that is inaccurate or wrong, or that have answers missing, are automatically rejected.

Journals that are rejected must wait 6 months from the date of rejection before applying again unless otherwise advised by DOAJ.

Redalyc-AmeliCA and DOAJ announce their intention to collaborate.

1200px-Logo-redalyc-2019Redalyc (Autonomous University of the State of Mexico), AmeliCA and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) are delighted to announce a collaboration focussed on increasing DOAJ’s coverage of Latin American non-APC Open Access journals and to broaden the 20-AmeliCA-300x102implementation of AmeliCA’s and Redalyc’s advanced technologies that make journal publishing more efficient and increase the visibility of the content.

Both organisations will work to increase the visibility of non-commercial, open access journals from Latin America and to encourage those journals to strive towards better standards and to adopt best practice. A particular focus will be journals published in Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities. DOAJ has been focussed on improving their coverage in DOAJ since 2019 with its project with the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and the recently announced collaboration with Érudit, Canada.

Lars Bjørnshauge, Founder and Managing Director of DOAJ, says: “We are very excited to be able to work with Redalyc-AmeliCA. We share the common goals of promoting non-commercial and non-English language open access publishing and helping non-APC and non-English language journals. DOAJ already has representatives on the ground in Latin America who are ready to collaborate with Redalyc-AmeliCA so this partnership really feels like a good fit.”

Arianna Becerril-García said: “We’ve always been big supporters of DOAJ and have always encouraged Redalyc journals to apply for indexing. Redalyc has been working for many years to automate the export of data to DOAJ and help journals in this matter. This collaboration is the perfect opportunity for more efficiency and coordination and will be an effective way to ease the integration of non-APC, non-English journals into DOAJ.”

For more information, contact: Dom Mitchell, DOAJ Operations Manager [dom@doaj.org]; or Arianna, Redalyc Executive Director [arianna.becerril@redalyc.org].

Redalyc-AmeliCA y DOAJ anuncian la intención de colaborar.

1200px-Logo-redalyc-2019Redalyc (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México), AmeliCA y DOAJ (el Directorio de Revistas de Acceso Abierto) se complacen en anunciar la colaboración conjunta para aumentar la cobertura de las revistas de acceso abierto no-APC de América Latina en DOAJ  y 20-AmeliCA-300x102ampliar la implementación de las tecnologías avanzadas de AmeliCA y Redalyc que contribuyan a la eficiencia y sostenibilidad de la publicación de revistas  así como a la visibilidad del contenido.

Ambas organizaciones trabajarán para aumentar la visibilidad de las revistas no comerciales de acceso abierto de América Latina y para alentar a esas revistas a alcanzar los mejores estándares de calidad y adoptar las mejores prácticas.  De particular enfoque serán las revistas de Ciencias Sociales, Artes y Humanidades. DOAJ se ha centrado en mejorar su cobertura desde 2019 con su proyecto con la Federation of Finnish Learned Societies y la colaboración recientemente anunciada con Érudit, Canadá.

Lars Bjørnshauge, Fundador y Director de DOAJ, comenta: “Estamos muy entusiasmados de poder trabajar con Redalyc-AmeliCA. Compartimos los objetivos comunes de promover la publicación de acceso abierto no comercial y en idiomas distintos al inglés y ayudar a las revistas que no cobran APC. DOAJ ya tiene representantes en la región latinoamericana que están listos para colaborar con Redalyc-AmeliCA, por lo que esta asociación realmente resulta adecuada”.

Arianna Becerril-García dijo: “Siempre hemos sido grandes partidarios del trabajo de DOAJ y hemos alentado a las revistas de Redalyc a solicitar la indexación. Redalyc ha trabajado por varios años en ayudar a las revistas a exportar datos a DOAJ en forma automática. Esta colaboración es la oportunidad perfecta para una mayor eficiencia y coordinación en esta tarea y será una forma efectiva de facilitar la integración en DOAJ de las publicaciones de idiomas distintos al inglés y que no cobran por publicar”.

Para obtener más información, comuníquese con: Dom Mitchell, Gerente de Operaciones de DOAJ [dom@doaj.org]; o con Arianna, Directora Ejecutiva de Redalyc [arianna.becerril@gmail.com].

Un partenariat entre Érudit et DOAJ : vers une meilleure visibilité et une plus grande découvrabilité pour les revues savantes francophones et bilingues

erudit-logotype-rougeDOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) et Érudit ont conclu un partenariat dans le cadre d’un projet qui vise à inciter et à aider les revues avec comité de pairs, diffusées en libre accès sur la plateforme erudit.org, en vue de leur indexation dans DOAJ.

DOAJ est une référence internationale pour les revues évaluées par les pairs et diffusées en libre accès. Actuellement, plus de 14 450 revues, en provenance de 131 pays et publiées en 75 langues, sont référencées dans sa base de données. Il contribue ainsi au rayonnement d’une recherche diversifiée, tant sur le plan régional que du point de vue linguistique. En tant que signataire de l’Initiative d’Helsinki, DOAJ déploie des efforts considérables pour indexer davantage de revues publiant dans des langues autres que l’anglais, de manière à souligner l’importance de la recherche menée dans toutes les langues.

« Dès sa création en 2003, DOAJ visait une portée internationale, d’un point de vue géographique, linguistique et disciplinaire. En permettant le moissonnage gratuit de nos données, y compris près de 5 millions d’éléments de métadonnées d’articles, nous offrons une visibilité mondiale même aux plus petites revues. Les données que nous rendons disponibles sont recueillies par de nombreux organismes et par les principaux moteurs de recherche et outils de découverte à travers le monde », explique Lars Bjørnshauge, le fondateur et directeur général de DOAJ.

 Afin d’attirer davantage de revues publiées dans des langues autres que l’anglais, DOAJ a choisi le français, qui, en tant que langue officielle dans 29 pays à travers le monde, représentait le candidat idéal pour lancer ce projet collaboratif. Érudit est une plateforme canadienne non commerciale qui rassemble plus de 220 revues francophones et bilingues, et dont 97% des contenus diffusés sont disponibles en libre accès. Les revues diffusées sur la plateforme sont des petites ou moyennes structures éditoriales et sont publiées par des presses universitaires, des sociétés savantes ou d’autres institutions de recherche. Chaque année, la plateforme Érudit attire 3 millions d’utilisateurs provenant de 85 pays. « Ce partenariat avec DOAJ est une très belle opportunité d’accroître la visibilité, la découvrabilité et l’impact des revues en libre accès que nous diffusons. C’est également un bon moyen pour souligner la qualité de ces revues. Nous sommes ravis de contribuer ainsi au développement du libre accès et de soutenir un système non commercial de communication savante », s’est réjouie Tanja Niemann, la directrice générale d’Érudit.

 DOAJ et Érudit travailleront de concert pour accompagner les revues francophones et bilingues dans leur potentielle inclusion dans DOAJ en leur communiquant les critères et les directives d’inclusion et en organisant des ateliers d’accompagnement. Le projet donnera lieu à une production importante de documents de formation et de soutien en français, ce qui sera également utile pour attirer davantage de revues savantes de la francophonie internationale. Le projet pilote sera ouvert à environ 50 revues et se déroulera de mars 2020 à décembre 2021. Lars Bjørnshauge ajoute : « Nous sommes ravis de conclure ce partenariat. En travaillant étroitement avec des organismes comme Érudit sur des projets comme celui-ci, nous constatons un taux d’acceptation de 95% parmi les demandes que nous recevons, en comparaison avec les 50% habituels qui proviennent de candidatures spontanées. Il est avantageux pour DOAJ de travailler avec Érudit et de profiter d’un contact direct avec les éditeurs des revues diffusées sur la plateforme. »

 Pour plus d’informations, veuillez communiquer avec:

Dominic Mitchell – Gestionnaire des opérations, DOAJ – dom@doaj.org
Gwendal Henry – Chargé de communication, Érudit – gwendal.henry@erudit.org

A partnership between Érudit and DOAJ: towards greater visibility and discoverability for open access French-language and bilingual scientific journals

PRESS RELEASE

erudit-logotype-rougeDOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and Érudit have entered into a partnership for a project aimed at encouraging and helping peer-reviewed open access (OA) journals disseminated on the erudit.org platform to be indexed in DOAJ.

DOAJ has set an international standard for peer-reviewed open access (OA) journals. Today, the index includes 14,450 journals from over 131 countries, publishing in 75 languages, demonstrating a regional and linguistic diversity of research. As a signatory of the Helsinki Initiative, DOAJ is working hard to ensure the indexation of more non-English-language journals as a way to emphasise the importance of research in all languages.

“From its launch in 2003, DOAJ has always had the ambition of being truly interdisciplinary and global in terms of geography, language, and scope. With all the DOAJ data being harvestable for free, including approximately 5 million pieces of article metadata, we give even the smaller journals global visibility. The data is picked up by organisations, leading search engines and discovery services all over the world, and we facilitate that by making it available in multiple ways,” says Lars Bjørnshauge, DOAJ Managing Director and Founder.

French, an official language in 29 countries around the world, was selected by DOAJ the ideal linguistic candidate to launch a collaborative project to attract more non-English-language journals. As a Canadian and non-commercial platform, Érudit brings together 220+ French-language and bilingual journals, with 97% of the content available in open access. The journals disseminated on the Érudit platform are small or medium-sized editorial structures, published by university presses, scholarly societies or other research organizations. The Érudit platform attracts 3 million visitors from 85 countries every year.

“This partnership with the DOAJ is a good way to recognize the quality of open access journals disseminated on Érudit and to increase their visibility, discoverability, and impact. We’re glad to contribute to the development of OA and to support a non-commercial system of scholarly communication by this partnership,” said Tanja Niemann, Érudit Executive Director.

 DOAJ and Érudit will work together to facilitate the application process for French-language journals by communicating DOAJ criteria, translating instructions, and organising workshops. An important by-product of the project will be more DOAJ training and support materials in French, which will be useful in attracting more French-language journals from other parts of the world. The Pilot project will focus on fifty journals and run from March 2020 to December 2021.

Lars Bjørnshauge adds: “We are delighted to enter this partnership. By working directly with groups like Érudit on projects like this one, we see a 95% success rate among the applications that are eventually submitted, compared to the usual 50% from unsolicited applications. It’s a great thing for DOAJ to work with Érudit and to be in direct contact with the journal editors and publishers on the Érudit platform.”

 

For further information, contact:

Dominic Mitchell – DOAJ Operations Manager – dom@doaj.org
Gwendal Henry – Érudit Communication Officer – gwendal.henry@erudit.org

Possible delay, due to COVID-19, to publishers’ ISSN requests via national ISSN centres

An important note from this month’s ISSN newsletter. I would urge publishers to sign up to the newsletter if you haven’t already done so.

DOAJ is taking the information below into account when reviewing applications. In particular, we know that applications from Argentina, Colombia, United Kingdom, Luxemburg, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Slovakia might be affected. Applications from this country which contain ISSNs which are not confirmed or registered will be placed on hold instead of being rejected.

Note to publishers requesting ISSN assignments from the ISSN Network
Due to the COVID-19 global outbreak and health and social measures imposed by several national authorities, ISSN National Centres and their hosting institutions may encounter technical and operational issues. This particular situation may have an impact on the timely management of publishers’ ISSN requests and ISSN assignments. Unfortunately, the ISSN International Centre cannot currently replace impacted ISSN National Centres and manage all ISSN requests and assignments. If ISSN National Centres and their hosting institutions are temporarily closed due to this crisis, the ISSN International Centre invites publishers to be patient and renew their requests regularly. We thank you for your understanding.

Progress report on the changes coming to the API in Q3 2020

Here is the second update about changes that we are making to our API. If you submit applications via the API or are using the API for journals search and retrieval, then you will need to adjust your integrations.

Although development is still progressing, we want to get as much information out to our API users as we can. Here are some key points:

  1. The only thing that is changing is the data model because we are changing some of the questions that we ask in our application form.
  2. Only the Journal Search and Retrieval and Applications models are changing. CRUD Articles and article search are not changing.
  3. We will have a new URL for the API. The applications and journals API calls must be sent to the new URL.
  4. We will establish a redirection for Articles calls.

We have been exploring ways to allow users to test their integrations before the new API goes live. These might include a sandbox and a whole test site for you to upload to. We will have more details on the exact testing features we can offer as we draw nearer to launch.

Any questions?

FinELib, the consortium for Finnish universities, will fund DOAJ for a 3-year period based on the SCOSS model

PRESS RELEASE

FinELib logoFinELib, the Finnish consortium for universities, research institutions and universities of applied sciences, has agreed to provide funding to DOAJ over a 3-year period.

The consortium has promised funds to DOAJ in recognition of the valuable contribution that DOAJ makes to open access and scholarly publishing. The move follows hot on the heels of Finland publishing its policy on open science and open research earlier this year, a move which was welcomed by Finland’s academia.

The amount of funding promised to DOAJ by FinELib is €31,500 per year for three years. This is at the level of “sustainable” funding and allows DOAJ to retain its focus on its goals for the current strategic period, one of which is to attract more non-English language journals into the Directory, especially within social sciences and humanities.

Arja Tuuliniemi, Head of FinELib, said: “DOAJ is a valuable open access service for Finnish research institutions. We are pleased that FinELib can take part in providing sustainable funding for DOAJ.”

In fact, the funding comes after the successful implementation of a joint project between DOAJ and TSV, Federation of Finnish Societies, to train journal representatives on the DOAJ criteria and help them submit a complete and proper application to DOAJ. The goal of the project is to increase the number of Finnish journals in DOAJ.

Lars Bjørnshauge, Managing Director and Founder of DOAJ, said: “We are very pleased that FinELib has facilitated that 15 of the member institutions have signed up for significant support over a three year period. The support will help us continue developing DOAJ with special focus on non-English language journals.“

The funding comes at the end of what has turned out to be a very successful SCOSS funding drive for DOAJ. The period ran from 2018 to 2020. The effect that sustainable funding has had on DOAJ can be seen in various blog posts.

For more information on funding DOAJ, contact Lars Bjørnshauge: lars@doaj.org.

A PDF version of this press release is here.