A leading index of open-access journals may shrink by more than one-quarter after an effort to exclude questionable and inactive publishers. This interesting information came to us from Nature in their article, “Open-access index delists thousands of journals.”
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is following up on its promise of two years ago that it would be tightening its standards for inclusion. Asking every journal in its index to provide more details about their operations so it could ensure that they adhere to basic publishing standards, they are now delisting over 3,300 titles.
The tightened policy is a seen by some as an improvement and move towards building trust in content and improving legitimacy. Others don’t see it as a big enough move and feel that there are still weak publications contained in the database.
This type of collaboration and support for open access is inspiring and sets a good precedent for future endeavors.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
