At DOAJ we advise not talking to or paying an intermediary to help you get indexed in DOAJ, but to go to the source: DOAJ has openly available, user-friendly documentation, in several languages, to help you!
You might have seen offers on social media, forums, and email lists to help get journals indexed in DOAJ, as well as other indexes such as Scopus or Clarivate’s Web of Science. We have seen an increase in these paid-for services with the advent of AI. We understand the pressure on journals to be indexed, but we discourage paying anyone to help you apply to DOAJ. You should not need to use a paid service since all the information you need is openly available on our website.
Nobody working or volunteering for DOAJ will ask for payment linked to assessing an application or indexing a journal. Our Editorial team and volunteers are a group of skilled experts who will apply that expertise, free of charge, when reviewing your application. If someone outside DOAJ offers you a paid service, there is no guarantee that they can deliver what they promise. They do not publicise when their clients are not indexed, and they may be using unvalidated AI tools in their work.
So that our editorial team can work with your application, someone directly affiliated with the journal or its publisher/platform should submit the DOAJ application. It should not be another person (a “third party”) acting on your behalf. An official journal representative will know the journal and its policies and processes and can manage queries and updates if the journal is indexed.
Our website contains all the information you need in its Guide to applying. You can also speak to our ambassadors for Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and if your application is reviewed by one of our volunteer editors, you will be able to ask them your questions.
Outside our immediate network, speak to your community, especially librarians and other journal editors. They can guide you on putting good practice in place, and not trying to make quick fixes to hide deeper problems. Our volunteers and team often take part in webinars and panels. A web search can help you find those.
Further information is available on our own YouTube channel. Presentations are also shared on our Zenodo community page. Advice on applying is on our blog and the OA Journals Toolkit provides guidance for new and established open access journals.
