Author: DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)

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.

Sign up to receive updates from us

DOAJ has never had a method to push updates to our users. We have always just posted information on this blog in the hope that it will find its audience. We are aware that some stakeholders miss important updates so we have launched an update service.

We will use the update service to inform you about:

  1. Our strategy and changes to it;
  2. Our technical roadmap and progress updates;
  3. Funding and funding models;
  4. If we add a new feature to the website.
  5. If we start a new campaign for signing up journals.
  6. Governance, particularly if we enrol new members to our Board, Council, or Editorial Sub-Committee
  7. When we need more volunteers to help us review journals.

Sign up here: http://eepurl.com/g3Y4v5

All sign-ups are managed via our Mailchimp account. DOAJ has a Privacy Policy which adheres to the guidelines laid out by the GDPR.

[This pst was UPDATED and CORRECTED on 25th May. DOAJ is not launching a newsletter service but a service which will push updates to people who have signed up.]

Provisional ISSNs versus confirmed ISSNs

At DOAJ, we insist that the ISSN for your journal is fully registered and confirmed at the time you submit an application to us. DOAJ does not allow provisional ISSNs. Applications which contain provisional ISSNs are rejected without review.

According to the ISSN International Centre in Paris, a provisional ISSN is assigned to a journal by the local national ISSN centre. An application for an ISSN can be submitted up to three months before the journal is launched.

The national ISSN centre is then responsible for sending the details of the new ISSN to the International Centre. The International Centre then registers the ISSN in their database as which point the ISSN has the status registered but not yet confirmed, that is to say, “provisional”.

A provisional ISSN becomes fully confirmed when the publisher informs their national ISSN centre that the resource has published two issues that contain at least five articles. (Each national centre has the right to adapt this and add restrictions to this requirement.)* The national centre then sends additional information to the International Centre to complete the basic record. Only then, will the record appear in the ISSN Portal as confirmed.

It is important that, before you submit your application to DOAJ, you check the ISSN Portal, and make sure that the ISSN(s) for your journal(s) is confirmed and that the title(s) match what you have on your site and in your application form.

*Corrected to add detail – thanks to Ammad Zafar for contacting us.

We can now fix article metadata ourselves

As part of our continued strategy to enhance our metadata offering, and looking forward to 2021 when our strategic focus will be on DOAJ’s place in the discovery chain, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the quality and recency of the DOAJ article metadata.

Errors in article metadata are usually reported to us by users of discovery services at libraries or by the discovery services themselves. The errors are often a broken URL or a missing article.

Since 2013, DOAJ’s stance on correcting metadata has been to contact the journal’s publishers and ask them to send an update to us. However, this approach is of limited success:

  • some publishers don’t respond,
  • some don’t know how to make the correction and,
  • since we do matching on the URL, the process often leads to duplicated articles.

As of yesterday, DOAJ can edit article metadata itself, including the URL, directly in the database. This makes changes immediate and goes a long way to improve the reliability of the DOAJ metadata. Importantly, it allows us to act quickly on queries sent to us by our discovery service colleagues.

The crux of the matter, when it comes to the accuracy of DOAJ metadata, remains unchanged however: all 3rd party services should update their copy of the DOAJ metadata regularly. DOAJ metadata updates every 30 minutes. Some 3rd party services only update their copy of our metadata every 6 months.

COVID-19: turnaround times may be affected

As with most organisations, COVID-19 is having an effect on DOAJ. Although we are an organisation without physical offices (virtual, already remote-working and Cloud-based), our team members and volunteers are all affected in real ways.

This means that we may take longer than usual to process applications. Many applications are processed in under 3 months but this may increase over the coming weeks. We ask you to be patient.

If you are a publisher waiting to hear from us about an application, the standard rules still apply:

  • do not email for a status update if you submitted your application less than 3 months ago.
  • before you contact us, check that emails from us aren’t in your spam folder. (Remember that our volunteers will email from their own email addresses and not DOAJ ones.)
  • always contact us using the Contact Us form and include the journal title and ISSN(s).

On behalf of everyone at DOAJ and all our volunteers, I’d like to thank you for your understanding but, more importantly, take great care of yourselves in these times of uncertainty.

Dom Mitchell
DOAJ Operations Manager

Heads up! Our API is changing.

The DOAJ is changing its application form. This means that there will be downstream implications across all of our metadata output channels, including the API.

A new version of the API will be released in Q3 2020. This new version will not be fully backwards compatible.

Those of you submitting applications via the API, or who are using the API for journals search and retrieval, will need to adjust your integrations.

Not all functions will be affected: for those of you who are uploading article metadata to us, nothing will change; there is nothing for you to do.

If you have any questions, please post them here.

Further announcements will happen here and on our Twitter feed.