Registration is open for DOAJ’s first webinar: ‘Open’- and you are all invited. – DOAJ News Service

“This event is built around the theme ‘Open’ and it will be a conversation with three guests chosen for their experience, aspirations for the future, views on progress towards OA as default, and their knowledge of global open access publishing. Abeni Wickham, a rising star and important new voice in scholarly communications, will moderate the conversation.

The event is free and open to everyone. If you are unable to join the event on the day, you can watch a recording of the event that will be made available afterwards. You can also follow on social media: #DOAJat20….”

New agreements open additional support to Directory of Open Access Journals in Canada | STM Publishing News

“Two new agreements between DOAJ, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and the Council of Atlantic Academic Libraries – Conseil des bibliothèques postsecondaires de l’Atlantique  (CAAL-CBPA), have been announced today. These agreements will provide a vital boost to the sustainability of key open access infrastructure, essential to the future of science and research in Canada and around the world.

CRKN has long been a strong supporter of DOAJ and encompasses seventy-nine academic libraries and five research institutions in Canada. CAAL-CBPA includes top tier research and teaching libraries in Atlantic Canada….”

EIFL support energizes Ethiopia OA journals sector | EIFL

“With support from EIFL, Addis Ababa University Libraries (AAUL) has increased access to and visibility of research from academic institutions across Ethiopia by upgrading the national open access publishing platform, Ethiopian Journals Online (EJOL), and adding 21 new journals from 10 institutions to the platform. 

As part of the ‘Enhancing Ethiopian Journals Online’ project, AAUL has improved the look and feel of EJOL, with customized pages for each journal, including updated journal profiles and useful information for authors and reviewers (editorial policies, author guidelines, reviewer guidelines). 

By configuring editorial workflows, the project has made the platform more efficient, and integration of DOIs has made journals and articles easier to locate. 

The project team also provided training for librarians, journal editors and editorial staff to familiarize them with the upgraded journals platform and its new functionalities. 

In addition, 20 journal editors took part in workshops on the use of the publishing software, Open Journal Systems (OJS), and  the eligibility standards and criteria required for indexing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  Journal editors also received journal policy templates.”

DOAJ at 20 – DOAJ

“We are celebrating 20 years of being an important part of open infrastructure with a year-long campaign throughout 2023, and we want to invite you to be a part of our celebrations!

We are holding three events for our community around the themes: ‘Open’, ‘Global’, and ‘Trusted’. Details about these events and how you can join them will be available on this page. We will also share interviews with key individuals who have shaped DOAJ into what it is today.

Further down the page is a historical timeline to give you a full overview of DOAJ’s important milestones from 2003 to today….”

Missing a golden opportunity? An analysis of publication trends by income level in the Directory of Open Access Journals 1987–2020 – Druelinger – Learned Publishing – Wiley Online Library

Abstract: The growing prevalence of the gold open access model can exacerbate the monoculture of research and inequality in knowledge production. This study examines publication trends in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) journals by countries’ income level from 1987 to 2020. By combining article metadata from journals listed in the DOAJ with World Bank country income data, this analysis examines the trends visible in plots of historical open access publication data. In 2020, the number of articles published in DOAJ journals by authors affiliated with high-income countries exceeds the sum of the other income categories. Article processing charge waivers seem to have more impact on high- and low-income countries than middle-income countries. The results show that the gold open access model has not been able to improve the extremely low number of open access articles from low-income regions. In addition, authors in middle-income countries publish in gold open access DOAJ journals at lower rates than authors based in other economic regions. The gold open access model is disadvantageous to researchers outside of high-income countries, highlighting the importance of supporting the diamond open access model as a potential means of improving global equity and epistemic diversity in knowledge production.

Advancing Open Access In Scholarly Publishing: Increasing DOAJ’s Coverage in Northern Africa | May 10, 2023 | Webinar Registration

“1-hour webinar hosted by the Forum for Open Research in MENA (F.O.R.M.) in collaboration with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). **Limited Seats Available** **French Language Presentation** In this 1-hour webinar, Professor Kamel Belhamel (Managing editor of DOAJ), will explore the open access landscape in Northern Africa. The first half of the webinar will look at the barriers faced by scholarly publications when looking to develop and implement open access publishing practices. In the second half of this webinar, Professor Kamel will discuss the benefits for open access journals of being indexed in DOAJ, give some tips on DOAJ evaluation metrics, and explain what editorial boards can do to maximise their chances of acceptance into the index….”

New filter: author retains all rights – DOAJ News Service

“Earlier today, we released an update to our search interface to provide users with an author retains all rights filter.

There are 7154 journals in DOAJ where the author pays no fees and retains all rights.

There are 3400 journals in DOAJ where the author pays no fees, retains all rights and the content is licensed with a CC BY license….”

WARNING DOAJ Publications – DOAJ News Service

“There is a website lurking on the WWW from an outfit that calls itself ‘DOAJ Publications’ or ‘Doaj publisher’. They have a Twitter account too.

Please note that this company is not affiliated with us in any way nor sanctioned by us.

We have emailed the company to ask them to stop using the DOAJ name as we think it is being used to deliberately mislead people.

If you can help raise awareness by sharing this message, we’d be grateful.”

How open access diamond journals comply with industry standards exemplified by Plan S technical requirements

Abstract:  Purpose: This study investigated how well current open access (OA) diamond journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and a survey conform to Plan S requirements, including licenses, peer review, author copyright, unique article identifiers, digital archiving, and machine-readable licenses.

Method: Data obtained from DOAJ journals and surveyed journals from mid-June to mid-July 2020 were analyzed for a variety of Plan S requirements. The results were presented using descriptive statistics.

Results: Out of 1,465 journals that answered, 1,137 (77.0%) reported compliance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles. The peer review types used by OA diamond journals were double-blind (6,339), blind (2,070), peer review (not otherwise specified, 1,879), open peer review (42), and editorial review (118) out of 10,449 DOAJ journals. An author copyright retention policy was adopted by 5,090 out of 10,448 OA diamond journals (48.7%) in DOAJ. Of the unique article identifiers, 5,702 (54.6%) were digital object identifiers, 58 (0.6%) were handles, and 14 (0.1%) were uniform resource names, while 4,675 (44.7%) used none. Out of 1,619 surveyed journals, the archiving solutions were national libraries (n=170, 10.5%), Portico (n=67, 4.1%), PubMed Central (n=15, 0.9%), PKP PN (n=91, 5.6%), LOCKSS (n=136, 8.4%), CLOCKSS (n=87, 5.4%), the National Computing Center for Higher Education (n=6, 0.3%), others (n=69, 4.3%), no policy (n=855, 52.8%), and no reply (n=123, 7.6%). Article-level metadata deposition was done by 8,145 out of 10,449 OA diamond journals (78.0%) in DOAJ.

Conclusion: OA diamond journals’ compliance with industry standards exemplified by the Plan S technical requirements was insufficient, except for the peer review type.

How open access diamond journals comply with industry standards exemplified by Plan S technical requirements

Purpose:
This study investigated how well current open access (OA) diamond journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and a survey conform to Plan S requirements, including licenses, peer review, author copyright, unique article identifiers, digital archiving, and machine-readable licenses.
Method:
Data obtained from DOAJ journals and surveyed journals from mid-June to mid-July 2020 were analyzed for a variety of Plan S requirements. The results were presented using descriptive statistics.
Results:
Out of 1,465 journals that answered, 1,137 (77.0%) reported compliance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles. The peer review types used by OA diamond journals were double-blind (6,339), blind (2,070), peer review (not otherwise specified, 1,879), open peer review (42), and editorial review (118) out of 10,449 DOAJ journals. An author copyright retention policy was adopted by 5,090 out of 10,448 OA diamond journals (48.7%) in DOAJ. Of the unique article identifiers, 5,702 (54.6%) were digital object identifiers, 58 (0.6%) were handles, and 14 (0.1%) were uniform resource names, while 4,675 (44.7%) used none. Out of 1,619 surveyed journals, the archiving solutions were national libraries (n=170, 10.5%), Portico (n=67, 4.1%), PubMed Central (n=15, 0.9%), PKP PN (n=91, 5.6%), LOCKSS (n=136, 8.4%), CLOCKSS (n=87, 5.4%), the National Computing Center for Higher Education (n=6, 0.3%), others (n=69, 4.3%), no policy (n=855, 52.8%), and no reply (n=123, 7.6%). Article-level metadata deposition was done by 8,145 out of 10,449 OA diamond journals (78.0%) in DOAJ.
Conclusion:
OA diamond journals’ compliance with industry standards exemplified by the Plan S technical requirements was insufficient, except for the peer review type.

Analysis of DOAJ-Registered Open Access Journals in Asian Countries

Abstract:  This study aims to understand the characteristics of Asian OA journals and to identify differences by the countries. 3,103 DOAJ-registered OA journals from 21 Asian countries as of 2020 were selected and analyzed from various perspectives using correspondence and correlation analysis. The results revealed that Indonesia had the most DOAJ-registered open access journals, followed by Iran and India. An APC was not charged by 70% of journals, but this varied greatly by country. Meanwhile, as a result of comparing DOAJ-registered Asian journals with international citation database listed journals, 11% of journals were listed on Scopus and only 2.6% and 0.1% were listed on SCIE and SSCI, which is represents less than half of the global level. In addition, although there are many free to read local journals in China, Japan, and Korea, the number of OA journals registered in DOAJ is relatively small. Therefore, it is difficult to say that the progress of OA in local journals is fast even if the country’s global research competitiveness is high.

 

Research funders supporting DOAJ’s future

“DOAJ is currently supported by several research funders who recognise the central role of DOAJ in enhancing visibility and discoverability of research worldwide and its role in the delivery of Plan S. These funders help to share some of the operational costs of DOAJ, an important acknowledgement of the critical need to secure the organization’s future independence and visibility of global open access research. …

Although  27 research funders are signed up to Plan-S, only six currently support DOAJ: Denmark – Agency for Science and HE, Austria – FWF, Norway – NSD, Sweden – Vetenskapsrådet, Finland – TSV, Netherlands….”

OASPA and DOAJ Announce the Launch of an Open Access Journals Toolkit

The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) are pleased to announce the forthcoming launch of the Open Access (OA) Journals Toolkit, scheduled for launch in the second half of 2023. Research Consulting is supporting them in managing the Toolkit development process as well as in liaising with an expert Editorial Board.