DOAJ uses a carefully selected set of criteria to assess 3 different kinds of quality of open access journals: 1) quality of the publishing process , 2) quality of open access conditions, 3) quality of scientific content

1. CRITERIA FOR OPEN ACCESS
PUBLISHING AND INDEXING
IN DOAJ
PRESENTATION AT J -STAGE
APRIL 4-5 TOKYO
TOM@DOAJ.ORG
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF DOAJ

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3. • D i r e c t o r y o f O p e n A c c e s s J o u r n a l s ( s t a r t e d i n 2 0 0 3 )
• C e n t r a l l y , p u b l i c l y a n d i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y a v a i l a b l e c o m m u n i t y - c u r a t e d
l i s t o f h i g h q u a l i t y o p e n a c c e s s j o u r n a l t i t l e s a c r o s s a l l d i s c i p l i n e s
• P r o f e s s i o n a l s t a f f a n d r e c e n t l y i n s t a l l e d a m b a s s a d o r t e a m o f
p u b l i c a t i o n s p e c i a l i s t s i n m a n y r e g i o n s o f t h e w o r l d
• I n c r e a s i n g l y u s e d b y f u n d e r s , u n i v e r s i t i e s a n d g o v e r n m e n t b o d i e s t o
d e c i d e w h i c h s c i e n t i s t s / g r o u p s c a n r e c e i v e f u n d i n g
• eg Science Europe (EU) requires scientists to publish in DOAJ, Scopus or WoS listed
journals for EU funded research
What is the DOAJ?

4. Science Europe Open Access

5. Centrally, publicly and
internationally available
community-curated list of high
quality open access journal titles
across all disciplines and
languages
The starting point for all
information searches for quality,
peer-reviewed open access
material
A hub for metadata for Open
Access articles and journals
What does DOAJ do?

6. DOAJ IDRC Funded
Ambassador Programme

7. WHAT IS A QUALITY OPEN
ACCESS JOURNAL?
• What is Quality Publishing?
• What is Quality Open Access?
• What is Quality Science?

8. • The Delivery of Technical Quality
• Adherence to best Publishing Practices
WHAT IS QUALITY
PUBLISHING?

9. The Basics
COPE, OASPA, WAME & DOAJ:
WHAT IS QUALITY
PUBLISHING?

10. The Principles
1. Peer review process
2. Governing Body
3. Editorial team/contact
4. Author fees
5. Copyright & Licensing
6. Identification of and dealing
with allegations of research
misconduct
7. Ownership and management
8. Website
9. Name of journal
10. Conflicts of interest
11. Access
12. Revenue sources
13. Advertising
14. Publishing schedule
15. Archiving
16. Direct marketing
WHAT IS QUALITY
PUBLISHING?

11. Editorial ”quality”
QUALITIY AND TRANSPARENCY OF THE EDITORIAL
PROCESS
 The journal must have two editors (Arts & Humanities) or an editorial
board of 5 members, all members must be easily identified and have a good
reputation
 Specification of the review process
 Editorial review, Peer Review, Blind Peer Review, Double Blind Peer
Review, Open Peer Review, Other
 Statements about aims & scope clearly visible
 Instructions to authors shall be available and easily located
 Screening for plagiarism?
 Time from submission to publication
WHAT IS QUALITY
PUBLISHING?

12. WHAT IS QUALITY OPEN
ACCESS?
• Free and (almost) unrestricted access
• Adherence to the BOAI definition
• No Embargoes
• No Hybrid Journals
• Copyright ownership clearly described
• Use of open access licensing like Creative Commons or
equivalent

13. The BOAI Definition
Open Access is:
a publishing system where all content is freely available
without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are
allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or
link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other
lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the
publisher or the author.
WHAT IS QUALITY OPEN
ACCESS?

14. • A r t i c l e s o n l i n e f r e e t o r e a d = O p e n A c c e s s ?
A r t i c l e s o n l i n e f r e e t o d o w n l o a d = O p e n A c c e s s ?
• A u t h o r s c a n o n l y u s e a c c e p t e d o p e n a c c e s s a r t i c l e s f o r c l a s s r o o m u s e ,
p u t t h e m o n t h e i r o w n o r i n s t i t u t e w e b s i t e , m a k e l i m i t e d n r o f p r i n t s i s
o p e n a c c e s s ?
• A u t h o r s n e e d t o r e t a i n t h e i r c o p y r i g h t i n O p e n A c c e s s ?
NO
• O p e n A c c e s s n e e d s B O A I s t a t e m e n t o n j o u r n a l w e b s i t e ,
s a y i n g t h e a r t i c l e w i l l b e i m m e d i a t e o p e n a c c e s s , f r e e t o r e a d ,
d o w n l o a d , d i s t r i b u t e , p r i n t o r u s e f o r w h a t e v e r o t h e r l e g a l p u r p o s e
A N D O p e n A c c e s s n e e d s l i c e n s i n g c o n d i t i o n s t e l l i n g w h o m a y u s e
a r t i c l e c o n t e n t a n d f o r w h a t p u r p o s e s
f o r i n s t a n c e C C - B Y , C C - B Y - N C , C C - B Y - S A
•
Common Misunderstandings on Open
Access

15. Open Access needs:
Legal Framework for Sharing
• An Open Access Statement
• Licensing conditions defining usage rights
• Note that Sharing is NOT the same as: giving away
• Sharing IS: improving your work by sharing it with others
WHAT IS QUALITY OPEN
ACCESS?

16. Copyright terminology
• Intellectual property right
copyright, patents, trademarks
• Copyright
note: ideas cannot be copyrighted
• Publishing right
part of full copyright
• Fair use
• License (definition)
COPYRIGHT AND
LICENCING

17. • Copyright for the author
• OR Copyright Transfer and in BOTH THESE CASES:
• Licenses defining open access usage conditions
COPYRIGHT AND
LICENCING

18. What is a license?
• Licensing means to grant a third party (anyone else
except the right holder) the right to use a
copyright-protected work
• A license is a permission to use a work in specific
ways
• Licenses can only be granted by copyright holder
• Copyright holder can be author or publisher
COPYRIGHT AND
LICENCING

19. • Non profit organization
• Legal framework for licenses
(publications, music, video)
• Not used for patents, or trademarks which are part
of the broader intellectual property rights
CREATIVE COMMONS

20. • Copyright for user
• Or ….. copyright for publisher
• Copyright OWNER grants usage rights
through Creative Commons license
COPYRIGHT
& CREATIVE COMMONS

21. CREATIVE COMMONS
The six variations of the CC Licences

22. • Copyleft is a license used for software
and music, not in publishing
• Copyleft is a type of license that attempts
to ensure that the public retains the freedom to use,
modify, extend and redistribute a creative work
• Copyleft is not the same as Creative Commons license
because ownnership is abandoned
• In Creative Commons licensing there always is a copyright
owner
COPYLEFT
& CREATIVE COMMONS

23. EXAMPLES
JAPANESE JOURNALS
NOT ACCEPTED IN DOAJ

24. EXAMPLES
JAPANESE JOURNALS
NOT ACCEPTED IN DOAJ

25. EXAMPLES
JAPANESE JOURNALS
ACCEPTED WITH SEAL

26. Must haves:
• An Open Access statement
• Comply with the BOAI definition
• A peer-review process, and describe the kind of process
• An editor/editorial board with clearly identifiable members
• Licensing and copyright information
• Aims and scope
• Published a least 5 articles per year to qualify (DOAJ criteria)
QUALITY OPEN ACCESS
JOURNALS

27. Recommendations
• Unrestricted copyright for the author
• No exclusive publishing rights
• No transfer of commercial rights
• Clear licensing conditions
• Preferably use of Creative commons licensing
• Embedded licensing information with articles
• Link to underlying data
• No mention of IF, instead use journal citation distribution
plots
QUALITY OPEN ACCESS
JOURNALS

28. DOAJ Seal (not required
for acceptance in DOAJ)

29. o J O U R N A L C I T A T I O N A N A L Y S I S I S F L A W E D
S O M E P R O B L E M S :
oS E L F - C I T A T I O N , M A N Y A R T I C L E S I N S T E A D O F O N E , M A N Y
A U T H O R S P E R A R T I C L E , A U T H O R C O N T R I B U T I O N , G H O S T
A U T H O R S , J O U R N A L I M P A C T F A C T O R N O T R E L A T E D T O
I N D I V I D U A L A R T I C L E Q U A L I T Y
Assessing Quality of Research

30. o C I T A T I O N R A T E S A R E F O R A R T I C L E S N O T J O U R N A L S
o T H E J O U R N A L I M P A C T F A C T O R I S N O G O O D
Q U A L I T Y M E A S U R E
o C I T I N G D O E S N O T N E C E S S A R I L Y M E A N R E A D I N G
o M O R E I S N O T B E T T E R
T H E D U T C H G O V E R N M E N T H A S
I S S U E D A D I R E C T I V E T H A T I T D O E S
N O T C O U N T I F Y O U P U B L I S H I N
H I G H I M P O A C T J O U R N A L S O R I F
Y O U P U B L I S H M A N Y P A P E R S ,
J U S T Q U A L I T Y C O U N T S
Citation Based Metrics: SCI
Wageningen UR Library

31. oT H E J I F I S H I G H E R W H E N O N L Y A F E W A R T I C L E S H A V E H I G H
C I T A T I O N R A T E S
o A V E R A G E C I T A T I O N S C O R E S I N J O U R N A L S S A Y N O T H I N G
A B O U T I N D I V I D U A L A R T I C L E S
o T H E J I F I S H I G H L Y B I A S E D T O W A R D S E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E
P U B L I C A T I O N S
o H I G H J I F ’ S C O R R E L A T E W I T H M O R E R E T R A C T I O N S
Citation Based Metrics: JIF

32. Table 2: Percentage of papers published
in 2013-2014 with number of citations
below the value of the 2015 JIF.
Larivière et al. (2016)
eLife 8.3 71.2%
EMBO J. 9.6 66.9%
J. Informetrics 2.4 68.4%
Nature 38.1 74.8%
Nature Comm. 11.3 74.1%
PLOS Biol. 8.7 66.8%
PLOS Genet. 6.7 65.3%
PLOS ONE 3.1 72.2%
Proc. R. Soc. B 4.8 65.7%
Science 34.7 75.5%
Sci. Rep. 5.2 73.2%
Journal JIF
% citable items
below JIF
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
eLife
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
EMBO J.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
J. Informetrics
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
Nature
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
Nature Comm.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
PLOS Biol.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
PLOS Genet.
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
PLOS ONE
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
Proc. R. Soc. B
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
Science
0
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100+
Numberofpapers
Number of citations
Sci. Rep.
highly skewed distribution of citations
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/
062109

33. HEADLINES IN, SCIENCE, NATURE, THE
SCIENTIST, PLOS IN 2016

34. ‘It is more important what you publish then where you publish’
Cameron Neylon
‘The relation between the impact factor and the quality of
individual articles of a journal is very weak’
‘The correlation of the number of retracted articles and the
impact factor is very strong’
Bjorn Brembs
‘Sick of impact factors’
Stephen Curry
We will no longer pay much attention to how much and where
our scientists publish, only quality will count
Secretary Sander Dekker, Ministry of Science & education NL
http://bit.ly/WNzA1Z
THE DEMISE OF THE IMPACT FACTOR

35. FOR PUBLISHERS:
DO NOT USE IF FOR THE PROMOTION OF YOUR
JOURNAL
FOR AUTHORS:
IT IS NOT IMPORTANT WHERE YOU PUBLISH BUT WHAT
YOU PUBLISH
FOR FUNDERS:
DO NOT JUDGE SCIENTISTS ON WHERE THEY PUBLISH
OR HOW MUCH THEY PUBLISH
Too much is wrong with the JIF

36. CONTROL OF THE
SCIENTIFIC QUALITY
OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL QUALITY ASSESSMENT:
DOAJ, Scopus, WoS differences
o NO RANKING Publishing Criteria, Peer-review, article structure, plagiarism
control (DOAJ) info on altmetric scores (future)
o RANKING Publishing criteria, Peer-review, Citation Analysis, Impact Factor,
Citation Distribution, info on altmetric scores (in development)
(Scopus, WoS)

37. San Francisco Declaration on Research Impact
http://www.ascb.org/dora/

38. ALTMETRICS
T A K I N G I N T O A C C O U N T C I T A T I O N S , S O C I A L M E D I A ,
C O N V E N T I A L M E D I A ( N E W S P A P E R S , T V , V I D E O )
RELATIVE CITATION SCORES
C I T A T I O N I N D I C E S A D J U S T E D F O R S C I E N T I F I C F I E L D
Article Level Impact Assessment
LEIDEN MANIFESTO
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.11
01/062109
DORA
The San Francisco Declaration
on Research Assessment
doi: 10.1242/dmm.012955

39. OPEN ACCESS.....
• E N A B L E S U S E F U L A L T M E T R I C S
• A R T I C L E S R E C E I V E M O R E C I T A T I O N S
• R E A C H E S A B I G G E R A U D I E N C E
• L E A D S T O B E T T E R E D U C A T I O N
• A V O I D S D U P L I C A T E S T U D I E S
• A R T I C L E S C A N B E M O R E E A S I L Y C H E C K E D
• D A T A L E S S P R O N E T O M A N I P U L A T I O N
• I S B E T T E R F O R A D V A N C I N G S C I E N C E
• L E A D S T O M O R E I N N O V A T I O N
The Reality of Open Access

40. How we detect questionable journals
• Low publishing quality
Journal name, website, fees, peer review, publisher, ownership, volume of
articles, advertisements, prominent soliciting for editors
• Low scientific quality
focus, format, self-citations, plagiarism
• Malpractice
false claims, hidden costs, spamming authors, wrong information
Questionable Journals

41. Questionable Journals
examples
Publisher has a total of 141 journals
Publisher has 700+ journals and organizes 1000 + ‘conferences’
Some
Problems:
-Peer-review
-Plagiarism
-Board
-Quality
-Impact Factors
-Editors active
with other Q
journals
(network?)

42. Questionable Journals

43. Questionable Journals
The Sting 1
October 2013
February 2014
Are Open Access journals so much worse than subscription journals?

44. Questionable Journals
The Sting 2
• Study published in Nature indicates malpractice in low-quality open access journals
• DOAJ is recommended as one source to find good quality journals by the authors
• Impossible for DOAJ, Scopus, WoS, JCR and other indexes to be completely ‘good’
• Extent of questionable publishing in open access in overrated also in this article because
they use data by Shen and Björk that were proved wrong by a factor 3 in a detailed study of
Walt Crawford looking at all the journals and not ust a sample (as Shen and Björk had done)
March 22,2017

45. Questionable Publishing in Perspective
• Not as frequent as suggested by the
former Beall’s list
according to a study* by Walt Crawford the number of questionable
journals in 2014 was about 3275 publishing about 121,000 articles
(Shen and Björk reported 8000 journals and 420,000 articles!!)
• Proportion of low quality journals is comparable between open
access and subscription publishing
FACTS
• Not all subscription journals are in Scopus : only 10-20,000 of 100,000 (data Ulrich’s Web)
• Not all open access journals are in DOAJ : only 8 -10,000 of 30,000 **
CONCLUSION Percentage of Quality Journals in open access and conventional
journals is comparable ad the problem of questionable journals is overrated
* Source :
http://walt.lishost.org/2015/11/ppppredator
y-article-counts-an-investigation-part-1/
** Source: Walt Crawford
http://citesandinsights.info/civ17i1.pdf
Questionable Journals
Shen and
Björk. BMC
Medicine201
513:230

46. Thank you for your attention!
tom@doaj.org
lars@doaj.org

47. Thanks to
all the Library Consortia, Universities and Publishers
and our Sponsors for the financial support to DOAJ!

48. DOAJ depends entirely on donations
https://doaj.org/membership