Apology: Open Citations Corpus and I4OC
We apologise for the error in conflating these two individual organisations and of course, we wish them both every success in the future in their important work in opening up the citation corpus.
IDRC grant to improve OA journals from the Global South
We are very pleased to announce that IS4OA/DOAJ has been given a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to improve open access publishing practices in the developing world.
The overall objective of the grant is to enhance DOAJ and the open access infrastructure that supports researchers` ability to publish in reputable open access journals.
The specific objectives are:
- To improve the reputation and visibility of open access journals from developing countries
- To increase the knowledge and use of best practices among developing world publishers of open access journals
- To raise awareness among developing world researchers of the threat posed by questionable open access publishers
- To create a web resource that provides researchers with criteria for the identification of reputable open access journals
- To increase the knowledge and use of DOAJ among developing world academics and publishers
DOAJ is now seeking 8-10 full time individuals as DOAJ Ambassadors (10 month contract) who are residents in the following regions and are native speakers of the indicated languages and fluent in English:
| Region | Languages |
| Latin America | Spanish and/or Portuguese |
| Middle East & Persian Gulf | Arabic |
| Africa (North/West) | Arabic and French |
| Africa (South/East) | English |
| India/Pakistan | Hindi |
| Indonesia | Indonesian |
| China | Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) |
The tasks of the DOAJ Ambassadors are:
- To promote DOAJ in their respective regions
- To review and actively solicit new applications and reapplications to DOAJ from their region
- To discover and assist open access publishers in their region in implementing good publishing practices
- To identify questionable publishers and practices
The role requires knowledge of academic publishing, in particular online journals, editorial processes, best practices and publishing technology standards.
You can find the job announcement here.
Lars Bjørnshauge
Managing Director
DOAJ
Disclaimer: “The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors”
DOAJ finances from 2013 to 2015
In the interest of full disclosure, here are the finances for DOAJ between 2013 and 2015.
DOAJ Financials 2013, 2014 & 2015 [updated]
New features, new technologies, new partners, new advances
2014 has had a promising start. After relaunching the new DOAJ site in December 2013, IS4OA has signed a further 2 development agreements with its new technology partner, Cottage Labs. While our first priority is to reinstate many of the features that were used daily by DOAJ publishers and users alike, we have also had the chance to layout development priorities for DOAJ to make sure it remains useful and at the heart of quality of open access publishing. For example, the clear need for better quality markers in open access publishing led IS4OA, with the help of DOAJ’s advisory board, to implement a hugely extended Application form and seek out a network of voluntary editors to help process applications.
IS4OA is now well positioned, through its partnership with Cottage Labs, to develop DOAJ features that the community is asking for: an API, OpenURL, the ability to collect metadata from PubMed.
We will be posting more details as the year progresses but most of the DOAJ updates can be found on their Twitter account: @doajplus
DOAJ acquires a new technology partner
In December 2013, DOAJ parted ways with SemperTool and started work with a new technology partner, Cottage Labs LLP. They are helping us to build a new, improved DOAJ on an open source platform.
The DOAJ Team has been reduced accordingly:
Lars Bjørnshauge – Managing Director
Rikard Zeylon – Managing Editor
Sonja Brage – Managing Editor
Dominic (Dom) Mitchell – Community Manager
Infrastructure Services for Open Access 