functionality

Widgets! Embed DOAJ directly into your site.

Happy New Year to all of you! We have a gift: two shiny widgets! You can now embed a set of search results or a DOAJ search box directly into your web sites.

Embedding search results
It works like this: 1) carry out a search in DOAJ 2) filter and refine the results until they are as precise as you need them 3) use the Embed button ‘share|embed’ button at the top of the search results to reveal the code that you will paste into your web page. The results that you embed in your site update automatically as DOAJ updates.

Some possible uses might be: a publisher can now display a list of all its journals or articles, indexed in DOAJ, on its own site; a library can display all DOAJ indexed journals with no APCs that have the Seal; a researcher might embed a list of all open access articles with a CC BY license that are pertinent to her research group.

Embed a DOAJ search box in your site
You can also embed a DOAJ search box directly into your site, allowing your users to search for open access, peer reviewed journals and articles directly. A user carrying out a search in this way will be taken to the search results in DOAJ. The search box can be embedded into your site, library portal, web page or blog, making quality open access material more easily accessible alongside other content.

We’ve created a new page for the widgets which has a little more technical detail on how to configure them so they behave exactly as you want them to. As ever, we’re always interested in your feedback!

 

 

Development plan for 2015/6

Recent discussions with a partner reminded me that we haven’t published a development plan.

I’ve put together a high level list of our developments: what we are currently doing and what we have next on the list. As it stands, it will take us through to mid-2016 but it is a very fluid document. We have the flexibility to add in items and move others so the 2016 items will be revisited in January 2016 and reviewed to make sure nothing else has cropped up in the meantime.

Some of these items I have already announced in earlier posts. I’ve collected those here.

As always, I’d welcome your feedback.

The new site upgrades are live; it’ll take some time for the data to settle

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!

Have you used our RSS Feed?

Have you used our RSS feed? It allows you to keep track of the last 100 journals added to DOAJ. It includes the journal title, the date and time that the journal was added, and a link to the journal’s home page. An item looks like this:

Antropologìčnì Vimìri Fìlosofsʹkih Doslìdženʹ
21 April 2015 19:15
Antropologìčnì Vimìri Fìlosofsʹkih Doslìdženʹ

You can integrate the feed with your browser feed manager, any standalone feed-reader, indeed anything that is capable of consuming RSS feeds. You can even integrate the code directly into your website using an RSS feed converter tool.

Let me know what you have any comments on the feature.

Updates to DOAJ will be switched off while we upgrade the site

Earlier this month I wrote about the twelve developments that we were working on. These are now ready to be released to the live site this week and we will be making the upgrade between Tuesday (21st April) evening and Wednesday (22nd April) morning British Summer Time (GMT+1). During this time, we will switch off all parts of the site that allow new data to be submitted to us:

  • the application form
  • the form for adding article metadata
  • the XML upload page for uploading article metadata
  • the CSV upload page for submitting bulk reapplications
  • the reapplication form

All other aspects of the site will continue to function as normal. We expect a full service to be reinstated by Wednesday 12 noon BST. I will post further updates here.

Further development: metadata harvester and API

Here’s some good news for a Thursday.

In May we will be starting our next development projects: a metadata harvester and an API.

For the harvester, we will run a pilot phase collecting the PLoS metadata. Just by gathering PLoS metadata alone, we will very quickly double our existing article count. In 2016, we’ll scale up the harvester to seek out and collect article metadata for as many DOAJ-indexed journals as possible that do not have metadata associated with them.

The API will have two functions. Although we haven’t finalised the details, it is our intention that it will allow publishers to bulk upload their own article metadata without having to manually upload an XML file. For our mega-publishers, such as Redalyc, SciELO, BMC and PLoS, this will ensure their journals are always up-to-date in DOAJ with the latest article content. It will also allow bulk applications by publishers of new journals. Secondly, the API will provide an interface into our database that will allow custom queries of the data and advanced analysis.

These developments take serious funding so if you haven’t yet donated to us then please consider becoming a Publisher Member, a Member or a Sponsor. With the community’s help, we can greatly improve the visibility of quality, peer-reviewed open access content.

I’ll post more details as soon as I know them.