openness

DOAJ Seal is now live on the site

The DOAJ Seal is now live. Although DOAJ has been indicating which journals get the Seal since March 2014, the Seal is now displayed alongside those journals that qualify. Look for this symbol:

DOAJ_Seal_logo_mediumWe’ve also added a DOAJ Seal facet to the search so you can see all the Seal journals together.

Journals that adhere to an exceptionally high level of publishing standards and best practice are awarded the Seal as recognition of those efforts. The Seal is awarded to a journal that fulfills a set of criteria related to accessibility, openness, discoverability, reuse and author rights. It acts as a signal to readers and authors that the journal has generous use and reuse terms, author rights and adheres to the highest level of ‘openness’. The Seal has nothing to do with the scholarly quality of the material published in the journal.

To qualify for the Seal the journal must:

  • have an archival and preservation arrangement in place with an external party such as CLOCKSS, LOCKSS, Portico;
  • provide permanent identifiers in the published content such as DOIs;
  • provide article level metadata to DOAJ;
  • embed machine-readable CC licensing information in article level metadata;
  • allow reuse and remixing of content in accordance with a CC BY, CC BY-SA or CC BY-NC license;
  • have a deposit policy registered in a deposit policy directory such as SHERPA/RoMEO;
  • allow the author to hold the copyright without restriction.

To date, 88 journals have qualified for the Seal and we hope to see that number increase steadily.