Editor Workshop, DOAJ, Best publishing practices

1. Open Access
Journal Publishing:
DOAJ and Best Practice
Presented by
Vrushali Dandawate DOAJ Ambassador
8 March 2017
Wolters Kluwer Medknow Editorial Seminar, Mumbai - 8th March 2017

2. Agenda
• What is Open Access?
• What is the DOAJ?
• Why is it important to be indexed in DOAJ?
• What do journals need for inclusion in DOAJ?
• Best practice in open access publishing

3. Open Access
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B579LlMi0Q4

4. What is Open Access?
•Open Access is not just a business model
•Open Access is not just about making content free
•Open Access is a philosophy
•Open Access allows anyone to freely read and use articles
•Open Access accelerates research

5. Open Access definition
•“Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of
research articles, combined with the rights to use these
articles fully in the digital environment” (SPARC)

6. What does Open Access mean?
•Free access without charge to all content
•No delay or embargo
•Readers can use articles for any lawful purpose
•No permission needed from publisher or authors
•Subject to licence
•e.g. Creative Commons

7. What is the DOAJ?
•The Directory of Open Access Journals launched in May
2003, Lund University, Sweden with 300 titles
•Community-curated not-for-profit database of high quality
open access journal titles across all scholarly disciplines
•Now includes nearly 9500 journals and more than 2 million
links to OA articles

8. •Governance
• Advisory Board – no influence, but providing advice – OA-
advocates, publishers and library directors
•Organization
• Managing Director – Lars
• Community Manager – Dominic, Clara
• Editor-in-Chief – Tom
•Managing Editors and Publication Specialists – Sonja, Rikard, Alejandra
& Judith
•Editor Groups (based on language areas) based on voluntary – non-paid
work
• (currently groups of Editors & Associate Editors
•DOAJ Ambassadors!!

9. • The importance of DOAJ to the various stakeholders
• Researchers as authors
• Identify good publishing channels for publishing in OA
•Comply with OA-policies & mandates
• Librarians/Libraries
• Provide access to lots of OA-content easily
•Enabling librarians to provide advice to researchers
• Determine eligibility for APC- support from OA-publication funds

10. • The importance of DOAJ to the various stakeholders (contd)
• Universities, Research Institutions, Research Funders,
Governments
•Determining compliance with OA-policies and mandates
•Monitor OA-publication output
•Determine eligibility for APC-support
•Identifying quality OA-journals to count in Research Assessment
Systems

11. The importance of DOAJ to the various stakeholders
• Publishers
•Increased traffic, visibility & impact
•Increased number of submissions
•Certification & prestige
•Inclusion in accreditation lists of research funders and governments
•Eligibility for support from OA-publication funds
• Service Providers (Aggregators, Databases and Search
Engines)
•Harvesting article metadata records for inclusion in services,
databases, indexes etc.

13. The DOAJ mission
•Curate, maintain, develop a reliable directory of online OA
scholarly journals
•Increase visibility, dissemination, discoverability,
attraction of OA journals
•Be the starting point for all information searches for
quality, peer-reviewed OA journal content
• Enable scholars, libraries, universities, funders, others to
benefit from freely available information

14. The DOAJ mission
•Help readers to find quality OA material
• Help authors to identify where to publish
• Help libraries to highlight OA resources to patrons
• Help funders to ensure compliance with mandates
• Help publishers to increase visibility and usage
• Help publishers to adopt best practice
• Help to build a better publishing system for all

16. Why index your journal in DOAJ?
• Higher visibility for your journal
• More discoverability of journal content
•Demonstrate quality in your journal processes
•Enhance reputation of your journal
• Attract more authors
•Meet requirements of research funders

17. Requirements for inclusion in DOAJ
• Full (“gold”) open access - not hybrid
• Immediate access to all full text with no embargo
• Peer reviewed journal
• Full text original research/review papers - not abstracts
• Primary audience is researchers
• Any disciplines/subjects
• Any languages

21. Publisher/Editor
Applies
DOAJ Editor
Assess/ISSN
DOAJ Team
Evaluate &
Recommend
DOAJ Editor
Final Decision
Feedback to
Publisher/Editor
Workflow
1. Reject
2. Approve
3. Approve & Seal

22. Journal website and content
•Journal must have a registered ISSN
• Contact details should be available for journal
•Unique URL per article
•Publication date for each article
•Minimum of 5 scholarly articles published per year

23. Journal information
•Clear open access statement
•Aims & scope
•Instructions for authors
•Peer review process
•Author fees (must be stated even if none charged!)
•Waiver policy, if applicable

24. Editorial board
•Journal must have an Editor and Editorial board
•Editorial board should contain at least 5 members
•Members must be experts in field
•Names and affiliations should be shown for all members
•DOAJ may contact some board members

25. Editorial process
•Demonstrate rigorous quality control
•External peer review before publication
•Type of review should be stated
•e.g. blind, double blind, open
•Plagiarism checking recommended
•using specialist software, e.g. iThenticate

26. Content licensing
•The terms of use and reuse of the journal content must be
clear to both authors and readers
•Creative Commons licenses recommended
•Medknow journals use the CC BY-NC-SA licence
•Allows people to share and adapt the content
•Non-commercial uses only
•Credit to original authors
•Share derived content under the same licence

27. Copyright
•Copyright of published articles may be retained by the authors
or transferred to the publisher
•For Medknow journals, authors sign publishing agreement and
transfer copyright to Medknow

28. Best practice guidelines
•Providing clear information on the website for authors and
readers is recommended
•Demonstrates quality and commitment to standards
•Builds trust in your journal
•See Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly
Publishing
https://doaj.org/bestpractice

29. DOAJ Seal for Open Access journals
•Best practice recommendations for OA publishing
•Based on 7 criteria relating to accessibility, openness,
discoverability, reuse, and authors rights
•All criteria must be met to be awarded the DOAJ Seal
•Note the Seal does not reflect the academic quality of the
journal

30. DOAJSeal

31. Medknow journals
•Archival arrangements via CLOCKSS, Portico (and PMC)
•Permanent identifiers (DOI)
•Article-level metadata to DOAJ
•Machine readable licensing in articles
•Reuse via CC licence
•Deposit policy registered at Sherpa/Romeo

32. Medknow journals
•Author does not hold copyright
•Journals meet only 6 of 7 criteria for the DOAJ Seal
•DOAJ Seal not awarded
•Currently less than 10% of the journals in DOAJ have the Seal

33. Information on DOAJ
• Home: https://doaj.org/
• Publisher information: https://doaj.org/publishers
• Apply: https://doaj.org/application/new
• FAQs: https://doaj.org/faq
• Best practice: https://doaj.org/bestpractice
• Help: feedback@doaj.org

34. DOAJ Ambassadors India
Vrushali Dandawate – vrushali@doaj.org
Sridhar Gutem- sridhar@doaj.org
Leena Shah- leena@doaj.org