Libraries are increasingly committed to addressing imbalances within their collections and ensuring that their users can access diverse outputs from across the globe.
DOAJ is the most diverse index of open access journals globally, from 135 countries and 80 languages. We also index journals from many smaller publishers, institutional publishers and diamond journals – all of which are underrepresented in the major commercial indexes.
There are several ways to use DOAJ to diversify library collections. Many libraries include DOAJ as a resource in their subject guides. Several commercial systems enable libraries to integrate our metadata into their discovery systems, and more and more libraries are taking up this option.
Primo and Summon, the discovery solutions from Ex Libris, are used by thousands of libraries around the world. Both these services are powered by the Central Discovery Index (CDI), which aggregates metadata from various scholarly and academic sources, deduplicating records to provide users with efficient access to a wealth of scholarly resources. If libraries select DOAJ as a data source in the CDI, their users can access the metadata for nearly 10 million open access articles from around the world.
Data from Ex Libris shows that 1877 libraries and library consortia worldwide are reaching Open Access journals via our metadata. Inspired by a similar exercise by our colleagues at DOAB/OAPEN, we analysed the data to show usage from 161 countries, with over 56 million interactions with DOAJ metadata annually!
DOAJ metadata is also being used to power innovative systems that enable libraries to reimagine their collections around open content, by focusing on the best way to display and promote open content rather than subscription-based resources. An example of this is CloudSource from SirsiDynix. We are delighted to have welcomed SIRSI Synix as a DOAJ supporter. They are making a financial contribution to our sustainability and acknowledging the value we provide to them and their users to access trusted open access journals worldwide.
DOAJ, as an adopter of the POSI principles, is committed to making our metadata openly available for other services to reuse in this way. This reuse boosts the visibility, usage, and impact of the journals within our index. We hope these examples will inspire even more libraries to ensure that our metadata is discoverable by their users.
With thanks to our Managing Editor, Leena Shah, for data analysis, and to Ronald Snijder from the OAPEN Foundation for advice
