DOAJ is a directory of open access journals that aims to be a credible, trustworthy index. It evaluates journals based on a set of criteria to ensure quality control and prevent questionable publishing practices. Over 12,000 journals from 128 countries are indexed in DOAJ, providing access to over 3 million articles. The directory helps researchers identify reputable open access journals and avoid questionable publishers that lack rigorous peer review or engage in inappropriate marketing.

1. Publishing in Open Access Journals – How DOAJ
can help to avoid questionable publishers
17 Nov 2018
ICTs for Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness in Agricultural Research,
Education and Extension of NARES 13-22 Nov 2018
ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore
By Leena Shah,
Managing Editor & Ambassdor, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
Email: leena@doaj.org
1

2. Overview
Part A
• What is Open Access?
• What problem in Scholarly Communication is OA
trying to address?
• How & why do you participate in OA?
• What are the typical concerns about OA?
• Questionable publishers
• Recent trends in OA – how does this impact us in
the Global South?
2

3. Overview
Part B
• Questionable (predatory) publishers
• Tips on avoiding Q publishers
• Blacklists vs Quality Indexing
• What is DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
• What makes DOAJ Credible – Criteria for selection
• What information can you find in DOAJ?
• Think.Check.Submit
• Popular OA resources and search tools
3

4. • Open Access is the practice of providing on-line access to
scientific information that is free of charge to the reader
and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.1&2
• OA is a kind of access, not a kind of business model,
license, or content.2
1 https://openaccess.mpg.de/2076881/2014_05-h2020-factsheet-open-access-faq.pdf
2 http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
What is Open Access?
4

5. Budapest Open Access Initiative1 in 2002
5
Open Access Definition
By Open Access to research literature we mean it is “freely
available online, permitting users to read, download, copy,
distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of these articles
or use them for any other lawful purpose.“
The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the
only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors
control over the integrity of their work and the right to be
properly acknowledged and cited.
1 https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/

6. 6
For a work to be OA, the copyright holder
must consent in advance to let users “copy,
use, distribute, transmit and display the work
publicly and to make and distribute derivative
works, in any digital medium for responsible
purpose, subject to proper attribution of
authorship”
Remove access &
price barriers
Remove permission
barriers
Open Access Definition
Bethesda2 and Berlin Statement3 2003
2 https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4725199
3 https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration

7. How open is it?4
4 Created by SPARC, PLOS and OASPA
https://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/HowOpenIsIt_English_001.png 7

8. Libraries
Universities & Institutions
Scholars
Free
Provide access
OPEN
ACCESS
ARCHIVES
GREEN ROUTE
Articles freely
available in
repositories –
discoverable
on the Internet
Inelastic supply
Increase disciplines & therefore titles –sm
Profiteering?
DUE TO :
SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION CRISIS OPEN ACCESS
Articles freely
available in
peer review
OA journals
OPEN
ACCESS
JOURNALS
GOLD ROUTE
Publishers
Sign over copyright
Peer review
FC Choy (2015). Why is Open Access important to
researchers? [PowerPoint Slides]. Presented at
Academic Publishing 2015, NTU Libraries,
Singapore.
8

9. How do you participate in OA as a
researcher?
GOLD ROUTE GREEN ROUTE
9

10. GOLD ROUTE
Identify a reputable OA journal1
Send your paper for peer
review
2
When paper is accepted –
you may pay an “article
processing charge” (APC) to
publisher
3
Your paper is published in
the OA journal
4
10

11. Use DOAJ to look for OA journals
 12,301 journals
 128 countries
 3 m articles
Full-text OA journals
Identify a reputable
OA journal
1
Send your paper for peer
review
2
When paper is accepted –
you may pay an “article
processing charge” (APC) to
publisher
3
Your paper is published in
the OA journal
4
GOLD ROUTE
11

12. Submit paper to selected
journal as per normal
1
When paper is accepted –
submit final peer-reviewed
copy to an open repository
(e.g. institutional Repository such as
ePrints@IISc)
2
Metadata of record will be
picked up by Google
3
GREEN ROUTE
4 Anyone can find your
article via Google 12

13. Submit paper to selected
journal as per normal
1
When paper is accepted –
submit final peer-reviewed
copy to an open repository
(e.g. institutional Repository such as
ePrints@IISc)
2
Metadata of record will be
picked up by Google
3
GREEN ROUTE
4 Anyone can find your
article via Google
Self-archiving
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
Publishers typically allow with
embargo period – 6 months to 2
years
Most publishers only allow
“accepted version” and not the
journal formatted version to be
archived in repository
Accepted version is your final
manuscript after peer review.
Most publishers allow this version
to be made available via your
institutional repository. Do not
lose it!
13

14. Green Vs Gold OA
Green OA:
• May not be available immediately due to publisher embargoes
• It is free, a cost-effective solution
• Complexity of Green OA – when, where and what version of a
paper can be made OA has led to it being ignored by
researchers.
Gold OA:
• May involve an Article Processing Charge (APC) for the author
• Immediately available with re-use rights ( Creative Commons
License)
• DOAJ indexes only Gold OA journals
14

15. A common misunderstanding is that all OA journals use an ‘author
pay’ business model.
Gold OA Journals
8709
3148
68
APC information about OA
Journals Indexed in DOAJ
No
Yes
No info
163
75
APC information about Indian OA
Journals Indexed in DOAJ
No
Yes
15

16. Diamond OA:
• Journals do not charge publication fees nor access charges
• Similar to Gold OA with the article going through peer review
Other OA models
Bronze OA:
• Unlicensed papers, free to read
Hybrid OA:
• Provide OA to specific articles in an otherwise subscription
journal
• Double Dipping – second income stream
• DOAJ does not index hybrid OA journals
16

17. What is a Preprint?
Author’s original manuscript before peer review and before it is
formally published in a journal. It is freely available on preprint
servers.
Preprint Servers
Preprint Servers:
By discipline: arXiv, bioRxiv, SocArXiv, EarthArXiv, PsyArXiv,
AgriXiv, ChemArxiv, PaleorXiv, ASAPbio, Peer J Preprints,
RePEc
By Geography: indiarxiv, INArxiv, ArabiXiv, FrenXiv, ChinaXiv
Video – what are Preprint Servers:
https://youtu.be/2zMgY8Dx9co
17

18. Why should you participate in OA?
18

19. Benefits of participating in OA
19

20. 20
Compliance with Mandates
National Institute of Health (2007) mandate
First mandate from major US funding agency - Deposit to PUBMED
Central - 12 months embargo - 75% compliance (2012, Poynder)
DBT & DST OA Policy, India (2014)
Accepts Green route
Research Council UK (RCUK)(2012)
Accept both Gold and Green routes – 6 months embargo
European Commission
From 2014, requires deposit in IR upon publication. 6 months
embargo in STEM and 12 months for humanities & social sciences
Large foundations – Gates, Ford, Packard, Open Society, etc.
Requires grantees to publish their work under CC BY license –
allow use, reuse, remixing, etc.

21. Concerns about Open Access
21

22. OA
journals
indexed
in WoS &
Scopus
are
approach
ing same
impact &
quality as
subscripti
on
journals
(Bjork &
Solomon,
2012)
Scientific Impact of OA journals vs
Subscription journals
22

23. Average Citations per paper over a three-year window (2015-17) for top 20
largest publishers in 2017 in SCImago (2018) split into subscription journals
(gray) and OA journals (red).
Reference: https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/07/11/scientific-excellence-at-scale-open-access-journals-have-a-clear-
citation-advantage-over-subscription-journals/
OA journals have a citation advantage over
Subscription journals (source: blog.frontiersin.org)
Across the
last three
years, OA
journals
receive on
average
7% more
citations
than
subscriptio
n journals
(Mirjam
Curno &
Stephanie
Oeben)
23

24. Questionable Publishers
“Sting operation” by John Bohannon (Science News), 2013
- Variation of a bogus paper submitted to 304 OA journals
- Half of the OA journals accepted the paper
QUESTIONABLE (or PREDATORY) PUBLISHERS
The practice of charging APC in Gold OA encouraged
some unscrupulous publishers to exploit researchers
eager to publish quickly
RETORT: Is it about OA or peer review; No control group
Warning signs: promise of quick turnaround with peer review; falsifying
credentials; using unsolicited mail, etc. Consult your librarian!.
24

25. Recent Events and Trends
25

26. Growing interest in Europe & US in engineering a
global ‘flip’ of legacy subscription journals to a ‘pay-
to-publish’ OA model. 1
• If paywalls are replaced by publication walls – Impact on
researchers from the Global South?
• Elsevier also raised a discussion about adopting a ‘region-
specific’ OA for e.g. European articles made available as gold
OA in Europe and ‘Green’ OA outside of Europe. 2
1 https://poynder.blogspot.com/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-view-from_24.html
2 https://www.elsevier.com/connect/working-towards-a-transition-to-open-access
Pay-to-Publish OA
26

27. • July 2018 – Researchers in Germany lost access to recent articles
from Elsevier following a breakdown in negotiations between
Projekt Deal (German consortium) and Elsevier
• May-July 2018 - Researchers in Sweden lost access to new articles
in Elsevier’s journals following a breakdown in negotiations
between the Bibsam Consortium in Sweden and Elsevier
• Mar 2018 – Couperin.org, the French consortium cancelled
subscriptions to Springer Nature journals. Discussions continue..
• Mar 2018 – Dutch consortium VSNU announced “that Dutch
universities and Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing have been
unable to reach a new agreement on access to scientific journals”
Pulling out of Publishing Deals
27

28. OA Initiative launched in Sept 2018 by European
Commission and Science Europe
 Ensure that by 2020, all research papers arising from
funding are made OA immediately on publication
 Structured around 10 principles
 Recent news: Wellcome Trust & Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation joined
Criticism:
 may have implications for academic freedom
PlanS
28
https://poynder.blogspot.com/2018/10/it-is-for-publishers-to-provide-plan-s.html
https://www.scienceeurope.org/making-open-access-a-reality-by-2020/

29. Journal twins : part A & B (theoretical)
Part A : already existing subscription/ hybrid journal
Part B: Fully OA version of the same title
- Separate ISSN
- Same Editorial Board & peer review system
- Once accepted author is given a choice
- Gives authors the option to continue to publish in
their preferred community journal
Mirror Journals
29https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/10/29/are-mirror-journals-a-better-path-to-the-open-access-flip/

30. End of Part A
Recap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1K
GBCY
30

31. What is questionable or unethical
publishing?
31

32. •Jeffrey Beall coined the term “predatory publishers”
•Preferred Term at DOAJ : Questionable Publishing
•Definition:
“The sort of OA publishers and journals who only aims
to collect article processing charges (APCs), but they
lack RIGOROUS peer review and PROPER marketing
practices”
Predatory Publishing
32

33. Questionable Publishing in India
33

34. Questionable Publishing in India
34

35. • It undermines science and the trust that the
system is built upon
• Viewed as a problem largely for Gold open access
journals
• Brings open access into disrepute
• Unfairly targets authors in developing countries
(see next slides)
Questionable Publishing in India
Why is it a problem?
35

36. Why are researchers publishing in questionable journals
at all?
• Ignorance – lack of attention
• Aggressive marketing scams cheats researchers
• Publish or Perish – get something on my CV!
• Research assessment – decision makers counting beans
• Exclusion from highly reputable journals from (mostly)
global north
• Researchers from Global South are particularly
vulnerable
Questionable Publishing
36

37. Global Bias
37

38. •60.3% - Asia (34.7% from India)
•2.3% - South America
•16.4% - Africa
Conclusion:
The problem of questionable OA
publishing is highly limited and regional
to a few developing countries, where
‘international publication’ is a
prerequisite for academic appointment,
more funding, or promotion.
Björk B, Shen C, Laakso M. (2016) A longitudinal study of independent scholar-published open access journals. PeerJ
4:e1990 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1990
Questionable journals (authors)
38

39. • Questionable OA publishers and/or journals has (1) caused
negative publicity to OA publishing in general (‘pay to publish’)
and (2) posed a danger to the landscape of Science
(‘production of low-quality research’)
• What can we do to combat the fast growth of
questionable OA publishing market?
Questionable Publishing in India
- A reflection
39

40. How to identify questionable OA publishers and/or
journals?
40

41. • Two major characteristics:
– Inappropriate marketing practices
• Spam emails
• Journal titles with “International”, “American” or “European”
• Fake impact factors
• Advertise a very short publishing time
• Advertise a relative low publication fees
– No or little quality control of contents
• Low-standard peer review process or even don’t have peer
review at all
Quick 5 Min Check
41

42. Blacklists?
OR
Quality Indexing?
Identify Questionable Publishing
42

43. Blacklists are not the solution
Beall’s list - Jeffery Beall maintained an online public list popularly
known as Beall’s list of ‘potential, possible or probably predatory
scholarly open-access publishers’. It was taken down in January 2017.
43

44. Quality indexing by indexing services
• DOAJ DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS
OA Journals only, no ranking, other language journals equal
to English journals
• SCOPUS
OA & subscription journals , ranking, geographical bias
(English)
• WEB OF SCIENCE
OA & subscription journals , ranking, geographical bias
(english)
• NATIONAL LISTS
OA & subscription journals, ranking (often based on scopus,
wos)
44

45. What is DOAJ?
45

46. DOAJ – more than a list of journals!
• Curates OA title in all subjects and languages
– journals undergo evaluation based on a set of criteria
– whitelist of 12,288 Journals (Oct 2018)
• An aggregation of article level metadata
– Publishers upload article metadata into DOAJ
– 73% of the journals do so
– Currently 3,438,715 articles
• All DOAJ services and data are free for all to use,
download and re-use
46

47. OA journals indexed in DOAJ - Languages
9481
2362
1702
1124
889
509
442 351 240
175 English
Spanish
Portugese
Indonesian
French
Russian
Italian
German
Turkish
Persian
47

48. OA journals indexed in DOAJ - Countries
1438
1363
1284
670
665
534
425
334
327
317
UK
Indonesia
Brazil
Spain
USA
Poland
Iran
Italy
Turkey
Romania
48

49. OA journals indexed in DOAJ – APC
Information
OA Journals in DOAJ Indian OA Journals in DOAJ
49

50. What makes the DOAJ index
credible & trustworthy? Criteria ?
50

51. Principles of Transparency and Best Practices in
Scholarly Communication
51

52. Criteria
 Content Requirements – fully OA, no hybrid, no
embargo..
 ISSN
 OA statement
 Copyright and Licensing Information
 Editorial Process – Ed Board, Peer review
 Journal Info requirement – Aim & scope, Author
Instructions
52

53. • 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, predatory behaviour
How DOAJ detects questionable journals
53

54. • Dedicated team investigating suspicious cases
• No reapplication from proven questionable publishers
for a longer time period
• Low quality journals will be rejected but can reapply
after 6months
• Transparency: public list of journals added/removed
DOAJ procedures for keeping it clean
54

55. DOAJ listed in Top 10 platforms for listing Creative Commons work
https://stateof.creativecommons.org/#data
OASPA TO REQUIRE DOAJ LISTING FOR SINGLE-
JOURNAL PUBLISHERS
https://blog.doaj.org/2018/08/07/news-oaspa-to-require-doaj-
listing-for-single-journal-publishers/
DOAJ is supported by more than 500 libraries and academic
institutions around the world.
https://doaj.org/members
DOAJ support and recognition from other
organisations
55

56. How authors can avoid questionable
journals
56

57. Watch the Video:
https://vimeo.com/151882443
57

58. Directories – OA and Free Journals
• DOAJ (Directory of OA journals)
https://doaj.org/
• OpenDOAR (Directory of OA Repositories)
www.opendoar.org
• DOAB (Directory of OA books)
https://www.doabooks.org/
Disciplinary Archives
• arXiv https://arxiv.org/
• SSRN https://ssrn.com/en/
• bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/
• ChemRxiv https://chemrxiv.org
Publishers & distributors
• BioMed Central http://www.biomedcentral.com/
• Public Library of Science (PLoS)
https://www.plos.org/
• PubMed Central (PMC)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
• SciELO
http://www.scielo.org/php/index.php?lang=en
• Wiley OA journals
https://authorservices.wiley.com/open-
science/open-access/index.html
• HighWire Press
http://www.highwire.org/lists/freeart.dtl
• PeerJ https://peerj.com/
• SAGE Open http://sgo.sagepub.com/
Databases and networks
• ScienceOpen
https://www.scienceopen.com/
• Digital Commons Network
http://network.bepress.com/
• PKP Index http://index.pkp.sfu.ca/
Free E-book on OA
• The Open Revolution: rewriting the rules of the
information age https://openrevolution.net/
• Jhangiani, R S and Biswas-Diener, R 2017 Open: The
Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing
Education and Science. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc. License: CC-BY 4.0
OA Resources
58

59. • Unpaywall (Impactstory)
https://unpaywall.org/
Harvests OA content from open repositories run by universities,
governments, open content hosted by publishers and scholarly
societies
• OAJF (Enago)
https://www.enago.com/academy/journal-finder/
Open Access Journal Finder
• 1findr (1science)
https://1findr.1science.com/home
Analytics and discovery platform. Aims to find all peer reviewed
articles - green, gold and hybrid OA articles. A paid-for service with
a free version
OA Search Tools
59

60. Hands-on Activity -1
Using https://doaj.org
Q. You are looking for peer reviewed journal
articles on Dengue. Use DOAJ to find them.
1. How many articles did you find on Dengue?
2. If you wanted to use the article content for
commercial purposes - Can you find out what
is the journal’s use/re-use policy?
3. You have limited funds to publish your article
on ‘Dengue’. You want it to be OA - which OA
journal would you choose? 60

61. Hands-on Activity - 2
https://thinkchecksubmit.org/
Assume you want to publish your research in
this journal. Use Think.Check.Submit to check if
it is a legitimate journal. List 2 reasons why you
would/would not publish in it?
a. Journal of Surgery
https://gavinpublishers.com/journals/journals_d
etails/journal-of-surgery-ISSN-2575-9760
61

62. Hands-On Activity 3
Finding OA articles using unpaywall browser
extension
https://unpaywall.org/products/extension
62

63. Thank You
63