All of our new site upgrades were successfully rolled out to the site last Wednesday. We’d like to hear what you think of the upgrades!
A few comments about what you will see now on the site:
- I mentioned that we will need some time for the data to settle. The site displays the new dataset only. That means that the data will grow as publishers resubmit their reapplications and those are accepted back into DOAJ. If you have been monitoring the data closely, there will be a large jump in the figures you are reporting on so you’ll need to account for that in any analysis that you do. Specifically, the number of journals with or without APCs has changed and the totals for the number of articles published per year have also shifted. I shall publish a blog post shortly that contains the last counts of the APC data and articles per year before the site was upgraded. This will serve as a historic record only but it is important that it is available online.
- Every journal has an extended ‘home page’ on DOAJ that reveals all the new data we’ve been collecting in our new form. There’s all the important bits up at the top, especially the APC information and then, by clicking on the ‘More’ button, you can reveal information about licensing, copyright and best practices that the journal adheres to.
- We’ve improved the way that tables of contents are displayed so you can now see clearly the volumes, issues and, if a journal has one, a continuation.
- We’ve tidied up the URLs. For example URLs for journals now look like this http://doaj.org/toc/2175-8042 instead of like this http://doaj.org/toc/0006191878084b8d8bddae52ce72c948. An improvement; I hope you agree!
- Try our built-in URL shortening service from Bit.ly. It turns this:
https://doaj.org/search?source={%22query%22%3A{%22filtered%22%3A{%22filter%22%3A{%22bool%22%3A{%22must%22%3A[{%22term%22%3A{%22_type%22%3A%22article%22}}%2C{%22term%22%3A{%22index.license.exact%22%3A%22CC%20BY%22}}%2C{%22term%22%3A{%22index.classification.exact%22%3A%22Health%20Sciences%22}}]}}%2C%22query%22%3A{%22match_all%22%3A{}}}}%2C%22from%22%3A0%2C%22size%22%3A10} into http://bit.ly/1IQ11j3 in two clicks! - Finally, we’ve added OpenURL back to the site so for any of you who were using that service to link out to DOAJ, you should find that those links now resolve again.
Thanks for your patience as we settle into the new data structure. It’s going to take some time for things to even out, not least because our site upgrade has revealed the true nature of the data and we have some data clean-up tasks to do.
If you have any specific questions about what you are seeing then do get in touch!
1.) Data provided for the journals now looks great! Thanks!
.
2.) You once (https://doajournals.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/twelve-exciting-and-important-developments-due-for-release/) wrote: “All [ ! ] of the data that we are capturing in the new application form will now be displayed against the journals and their articles.”. I once (https://doajournals.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/greater-visibility-to-apcs-amount-currency-url/comment-page-1/#comment-219) gave you a “LIST OF ALL QUESTIONS THAT DO NOT LEAD TO DATA IN THE DOAJ”: One question without data was and still is: “27) Does the journal allow software/spiders to automatically crawl the journal content (also known as text mining)? *”.
.
Does DOAJ intend to add the last bit of missing information “allow crawling?” ?
Thanks for following my hint, replacing now “anyone” in question 27.
.
3.) Is there a link with which I can make the journal page come on and display directly all information (including “More”)?
4.) Much looking forward to “We will shortly start adding the DOAJ Seal logo to journal landing pages and journal entries in search results.”. I think, it is NOT SO EASY to get the rules logically in place. Requirements include: “3. provide article level metadata to DOAJ (Question 29). ‘No’ or failure to provide metadata within 3 months do not qualify for the Seal.”
.
I understand from this that a journal can get accepted into DOAJ with “No” to “metadata to DOAJ”.
.
If metadata is already supplied (reapplication), the seal can be awarded as part of the check.
.
If an applicant answers “Yes” to Question 29 (and is selecting the meaning: “intend to provide”), DOAJ will need to check a second time after three month if metadata is finally supplied to decide about the seal.
.
If metadata is not delivered after 3 month, the journal will never get the DOAJ Seal (requirement 3 not met) – unless maybe the journal reapplies voluntarily just to get the seal. Does the journal need to wait 6 month for this second application? If yes, when does the 6 month waiting period start?
Thanks for your thoughts Dieter.
We decided not to publish the answers to question 27 since spiders know automatically whether they can or can’t crawl a site and there is no real way that a human user can check this for a normal use case.
The links to the journal homepages are structured thus: https://doaj.org/toc/%5BISSN%5D. There is no separate URL for the expanded info.
Whether a journal is indexed or not in DOAJ is something that will be reviewed regularly. We are able to remove the Seal if we find that a journal has ceased to adhere to all of the Seal questions.
Best, Dom
Seal and Metadata Upload
.
Thanks for the details, Dom. With respect to putting the Seal in place and requirement No 3 (metadata) the sequence is – as you describe – apparently this:
a) A journal gets the Seal, if Question 29 is answered with “yes” (no matter if presently metadata is delivered or not) and all other 5 seal items are also met.
b) The Seal is taken away, if DOAJ later routinely checks the journal, three month have passed, and metadata is still not delivered.
.
.
Allow to crawl?
.
Ok, the answer to “27) Does the journal allow software/spiders to automatically crawl the journal content (also known as text mining)? *” does not need to be in DOAJ, because the ANSWER for every journal in(!) the database IS ALWAYS “YES”. This follows from https://doaj.org/publishers#faqs:
.
“… things that we will check … That the … journal’s articles have ‘free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, CRAWL them for indexing …’ ”
.
(Please let us know should DOAJ’s philosophy be different).