A webinar presented by the DOAJ Ambassador for Southern Africa, Ina Smith, on getting to know DOAJ, how to submit a quality application and some explanations around Best Practice and DOAJ's expectations in this area.

1. Introduction to the
Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ)
Presented by
Tom Olijhoek DOAJ Editor-in-Chief tom@doaj.org
Ina Smith DOAJ Ambassador ina@doaj.org
Friday 12 August 2016

2. Agenda
• What is the DOAJ?
• What is Open Access? Who needs (Open) Access?
Why Open Access?
• Mission of the DOAJ
• Required information for inclusion in the DOAJ
• Application & Evaluation process

3. What is the DOAJ?
• Directory of Open Access journals
• Launched in May 2003, Lund University, Sweden – list of
300 titles
• Centrally, publicly and internationally available
community-curated database of high quality open access
journal titles across all disciplines (scientific/scholarly)
• Aim: to be the starting point for all information searches
for quality, peer-reviewed open access material

4. What is Open Access?
Budapest, Bethesda, Berlin Conferences 2002-2003
http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/initiatives

5. Example DOAJ OA Statement
This is an Open Access journal which means that 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. This is in accordance with
the BOAI definition of Open Access.

6. Who Needs (Open) Access?
https://whoneedsaccess.org/

7. Who Needs (Open) Access?
• Scientists/scholars not affiliated with institutions
• Students in (high/secondary) schools
• Physicians
• Health care workers/practitioners
• Patient groups
• And MANY MANY more!

8. Why Open Access?
Jack Andraka- Tapping into the hidden innovator: an open access story
How Open Access Empowered a 16-Year-Old to Make Cancer Breakthrough

9. Why Open Access?

10. Why Open Access?
• (State) funded research should be available to all
• More exposure
• More citations
• More review / control post-publication
• Better quality science
• More efficiency - less double studies
• Everybody can participate in knowledge creation
• More use of innovation potential
• And more …

11. DOAJ Mission (1)
• Curate, maintain, develop reliable source of online
open access (OA) scholarly journals
• Verify that entries comply with reasonable standards
• Increase visibility, dissemination, discoverability,
attraction of OA journals
• Enable scholars, libraries, universities, research
funders, others to benefit from information and
sources

12. DOAJ Mission (2)
• Facilitate integration of OA journals into library &
aggregator services
• Assist publishers & journals to meet reasonable digital
publishing standards
• Support transition of scholarly communication to a
model that serves science, higher education industry,
innovation, societies, the people
• Collaborate with interested stakeholders
• From an unsustainable scholarly communication
system to a sustainable scholarly communication
system

13. Source: http://www.scienceeurope.org/uploads/PressReleases/270415_Open_Access_New_Principles.pdf
Indexing
Copyright
Re-use
Sustainable
Archiving
Machine
Readability

14. https://doaj.org/

15. Publisher/Editor
Applies
DOAJ Main Editor
Assess/ISSN
DOAJ Ambassador
Evaluates &
Recommends
DOAJ Main Editor
Final Decision
Feedback to
Publisher/Editor
Workflow
1. Reject
2. Approve
3. Approve & Seal

16. Evaluated
DOAJ Seal

17. DOAJSeal

18. Defining a High Quality OA Journal
• No access charges for readers/institutions (users)
• Users are free to “read, download, copy, distribute,
print, search, or link to the full texts of articles
published in the journal, or use them for any other
lawful purpose" (See http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read)
• User cite/reference original source as always
• Peer-reviewed scholarly research articles as always
• Highly transparent, clear policies
• Licensing terms (CCL) & Copyright clear

19. Journals included in the DOAJ (1)
• Full Open Access (OA) (not Hybrid), peer reviewed
• One third scientific/scholarly publishing full text,
original research/review papers
• All disciplines/subjects
• Sources: academic, societies, government,
commercial, non-profit, private
• Level: researchers
• All languages (also where more than one applies)

20. Journals included in the DOAJ (2)
• No embargo, full text immediately accessible without
barriers
• Print version can be made available at a fee
• Adhere to Principles of Transparency and Best
Practice Guidelines as far as possible
See https://doaj.org/bestpractice

21. Required information for
inclusion in the DOAJ
*Basic requirement

22. Journal Web Site (1)*
• Dedicated web site per journal – journal specific web
address - eg: http://www.samj.org.za/
• All journal content centrally available – not spread
over various web sites
• Do not mimic other journal web sites
• Web site clear, concise, easy to navigate, transparent,
up to date and correct content – high ethical and
professional standards
• Language & grammar usage correct, spell check

23. Journal Web Site (2)*
• Visible links to business information
• Avoid distracting, offensive, irrelevant, moving,
blinking advertisements
• Unique identifier:
• Journal level (web address, Online ISSN)
• Article metadata level (also DOI for each article)
• Author level (eg ORCID)
• Full text article level (pdf, html, xml, epub)
• ISSN (International Standard Serial Number)
• Online ISSN*
• Print ISSN

24. Journal Content *
• Clear journal structure for easier navigation, indexing,
discoverability – less is more
• Publication date for each article
• Publication year (also per volume/issue if applicable)
• 5 articles per year
• Start & end page number per article
• Authors, affiliations, countries, ORCIDs
• Articles arranged in Table of Contents
• Search/Browse option
• Links to Current, Archive/Past Issues

25. http://journals.assaf.org.za/ (OJS)

26. http://journals.assaf.org.za/ (OJS)

28. Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
• Thomson Reuters JIF against ethics and principles of OA
• relates less and less to citation rates
• unrelated to individual article quality in a journal
• unrelated to quality of individual scientist publishing in a given
journal
• Display of IF information on journal web page discouraged
• DOAJ question: download statistics on article level
1. Corneliussen, S.T. (2016) ‘Bad summer for the journal impact factor’, Physics Today, . doi: 10.1063/PT.5.8183.
2. Lariviere, V., Kiermer, V., MacCallum, C.J., McNutt, M., Patterson, M., Pulverer, B., Swaminathan, S., Taylor, S., Curry, S.,
de Montreal, U., @@, A., mmcnutt and Nature, S. (2016) ‘A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation
distributions’, New Results, , p. 62109. doi: 10.1101/062109.
3. The demise of the impact factor: The strength of the relationship between citation rates and IF is down to levels last
seen 40 years ago (2012) Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/06/08/demise-impact-factor-
relationship-citation-1970s/ (Accessed: 11 August 2016).

29. Ownership & Management*
• Journal title unique – not confusing/misleading;
alternative/former titles; abbreviated titles
• Avoid using misleading information
• Each journal unique, journal specific policies
• All business information about journal available from
central web site for journal - not generic web site for
publisher

30. Ownership & Management*
• Journal Management
System/platform/host/aggregator eg: OJS, HighWire
Press, EBSCO, ScholarOne, SciELO SA, Sabinet, AJOL
• Publisher
• Country of publication
• Society or institution owning journal

31. Editorial Office & Editorial Team *
• Editor/Editor-in-Chief/Associate Editor/Co-Editor
• Full names, Affiliations, Countries, Emails, ORCIDs
• Postal address of office, country
• Contact information: name/email/telephone

32. Governing Body*
• Editorial Board/Editorial Advisory Board
• Arts & Humanities allowed editorial review, 2 editors,
no editorial board
• Members to be experts in field/journal scope
• Full names, Affiliations, Countries, Emails, ORCIDs

33. Aims & Scope*
• Emphasis
• Discipline/s
• Kind of papers
• Kind of studies
• What does journal want to achieve
• Keywords to describe journal

34. Author Fees
• Article Processing Charges (APCs)?
• Article Submission Charges (ASCs)?
• Manuscript Handling Fees?
• Galley fees, page charges, colour charges, etc.?
• Per article (incl. any taxes if applicable) – not per page
• Waiver policy eg for developing country authors
• Clearly visible for prospective authors – also if
no charges apply*

35. Peer Review Process*
• Advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers/
experts in the field who are not part of the journal's
editorial staff
• Quality control rigorous
• Process & policies clearly described on journal's web
site
• Editorial/Peer - Blind/Double blind/Open

36. Instructions for Authors*
• Detailed style guide
• Description of quality control process (review)
• Copyright information
• Licensing information
• Plagiarism policy
• Instructions on how to submit an article
• Contact email address

37. Access & Usage
• Full text of all content available as Open Access, no
delay/embargo*
• How accessible is journal & metadata to the rest of the
world, harvesters/spiders (text mining), DOAJ
• Open Access for all articles, Choice Open Access (author),
Pay per View (reader)
• Journal specific OA statement/policy*
• Differentiate between OA statement – Copyright -
Licensing

38. Rights
• Recommend: author retains copyright without
restrictions
• Recommend: author retains publishing rights without
restrictions
• Recommend: no transfer of commercial rights to
publisher

39. Content Licensing
• Conditions for use
• Creative Commons License or other
• Clearly described on web site
• Licensing terms on all articles, all versions (html, pdf,
xml etc.)
• Embedded in article level metadata and machine-
readable

40. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
1
2

41. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
3
4

42. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
5
6

43. Createyourown

44. Createyourown

45. ArticlelevelCCL

46. CCLSetupinOJS

47. Deposit Policy
• Journal policy registered with deposit policy directory
• Describes policy of journal on how different versions
of articles published in journal can be shared online eg
to Mendley, repositories, personal web page and
more
• Deposit Policy Directories: Dulcinea, OAKlist, Heloise,
Diadorim, SHERPA/RoMEO

48. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php

50. Ethics & Malpractice
• Indicate steps to identify & prevent papers where
research misconduct occurred
• Unethical
• Plagiarism (statement & similarity check tool)
• Citation manipulation
• Data falsification/fabrication
• See COPE Guidelines in dealing with allegations
• Plagiarism policy

51. Conflict of Interest
• Situation that has potential to undermine impartiality
of a reviewer because of possibility of clash between
reviewer’s self-interest and author’s interest
(http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/conflict-of-interest.html)
• Policy

52. Transparency with regards to costs
• Revenue sources (eg author fees, subscriptions,
advertising, reprints, institutional support,
organizational support, sponsors)
• Advertising policy, types of ads, decision making on
ads, ads linked to content or reader
behavior/displayed at random
• Marketing: appropriate, well targeted, unobtrusive

53. Publishing Schedule
• Clearly indicate periodicity
• Annually, bi-annually, monthly, bi-monthly, continuous,
etc.
• Average number of weeks between submission &
publication
• At least 5 articles per year
• First calendar year in which journal available as OA full
text
• No interruptions

54. Digital Archiving & Preservation
• Electronic backup
• Cloud, disk, server, tapes, etc
• Preservation – Keepers’ Registry & PubMed Central
• Portico
• CLOCKSS
• LOCKSS
• PMC/PMC Europe/PMC Canada
• National library
• Open Journal Systems (OJS) – PKP Private LOCKSS network
• Not institutional archives or online publisher archive

55. Information on the DOAJ
• Home: https://doaj.org/
• About: https://doaj.org/about
• Publisher information: https://doaj.org/publishers
• Apply: https://doaj.org/application/new
• FAQs: https://doaj.org/faq
• Best Practice: https://doaj.org/bestpractice

56. Thank you for
assisting with
developing
and building a
database of
quality,
peer-reviewed
Open
Access journals!