This is a myth. A common misconception is that DOAJ is owned by publishers. In reality, DOAJ is 100% independent and the majority (82%) of its funding is from public organisations. All of the funding received by DOAJ is given voluntarily and the majority comes from public organisations, such as libraries, library consortia, research funders…
This is a myth. Unlike some other indexing services, if a journal is accepted into DOAJ, we won’t automatically go and collect published content. Publishers have to send the content to us, either via our API or as XML. Getting a journal accepted into DOAJ is a great feeling and it ensures that the metadata…
This is a myth. People think that DOAJ exists to index all open access journals. A journal can only be indexed if it passes all of our criteria. The Directory of Everything Open Access The Directory of Everything open access would be a wonderful thing but of how much use would it be? DOAJ understands…
This is a myth. There is a common misunderstanding that for a journal to have its application accepted and be indexed in DOAJ it must meet all the criteria for the DOAJ Seal. There is an assumption, born out of that misunderstanding, that journals in DOAJ without the Seal are of inferior quality. This is…
This is a myth. From about 2012 until 2017, DOAJ was struggling to keep on top of the amount of applications being received. Implementing new acceptance criteria and making 9900+ journals reapply exacerbated the problem and suddenly we had many reapplications and new applications coming in at the same time. Triage All applications go through…
This is, of course, a myth. Some people are afraid to use DOAJ because they believe that it lists questionable (“predatory”) journals. DOAJ started to clean up its index in 2014. DOAJ was the first service to define the standards aimed at preserving the quality and trustworthiness of a database of open access journals. Today,…
This is a myth. One of the most common criticisms levelled at DOAJ, particularly over the last 5 years, is that the index is not inclusive enough; that its coverage is poor; and that it lists only a fraction of the open access journals that exist. Our research shows that many journals reported as “missing”…
In May 2025, Sámi dieđalaš áigečála (Sámi Scientific Journal) was included in DOAJ and is the only scholarly journal publishing exclusively in Sámi. Editor-in-chief, Harald Gaski provides some information about the journal and the value of supporting and amplifying Indigenous voices. Sámi people Sámi dieđalaš áigečála (SDÁ), published by Septentrio Academic Publishing, is to my…
Realizamos una encuesta en nuestra comunidad acerca de los metadatos que recopilamos. Las respuestas nos están ayudando a garantizar que DOAJ esté actualizado y satisfaga las necesidades de sus usuarios. Eliminaremos algunos enlaces y retiraremos algunas preguntas de nuestra aplicación, y estamos evaluando un mejor soporte para ciertos elementos de nuestros metadatos. Retiraremos el Sello…
We consulted with the community about the metadata we collect. The responses are helping us to ensure that DOAJ is up-to-date and meets the needs of its users. We will remove some links, we will remove some questions, and we are considering better support for some metadata elements. We will retire the DOAJ Seal at…
