about doaj

New article on DOAJ available at ScienceOpen

We have just published an article in the open access journal ScienceOpen Research, giving an overview of the history and current status of the DOAJ. Please read and share the article! We would welcome your participation in the post-publication peer review of this article and/or any comments.

Criteria for open access and publishing
Authors: Tom Olijhoek, Dominic Mitchell and Lars Bjornshauge
DOI: 10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-EDU.AMHUHV.v1

After a brief historical overview, DOAJ policies regarding open access, intellectual property rights and questionable publishers are explained in detail. The larger part of the article is a much requested explanation on how DOAJ uses its new set of criteria for the evaluation of open access journals and the rationale behind choosing the seven extra criteria that qualify for the DOAJ Seal. A final section is devoted to the extended possibilities that DOAJ offers to scholars and publishers for searching the database and for uploading metadata.

Updated site information

The site information pages on DOAJ have had an overhaul (long overdue!) and hopefully it is now easier for you to find all the information you need about submitting journals to DOAJ, uploading metadata or just about DOAJ itself.

Three pages have changed:

  1. About DOAJ. It is now clearer that DOAJ is a member organisation. There is a new section about the DOAJ constitution and a more detail about what DOAJ is and who it partners with.
  2. Information for publishers. This page has been revamped to bring together information from a couple of pages and make it clearer about some of the basic criteria that your journal must meet before you submit an application. We have clarified our current admission policy in a disclaimer, making it clearer on how DOAJ treats publishers or journals who are found to be providing false information. (The disclaimer has also been added to the top of the application form.) It is now clearer about what happens when an application is accepted or rejected, including a list of common reasons for rejection. A complaints process has been added. The list of FAQs for publishers has been expanded and updated to include new information, for example on the DOAJ Seal.
  3. Frequently Asked Questions. The FAQs page has been restructured and expanded to include new and updated information. There is a new section for developers and on how to contribute to DOAJ. It is now clearer on how to get hold of, and what you can do with, our metadata.

DOAJ would welcome your feedback on any of this.