New phase for the Directory of Open Access Journals

Lund, Sweden. Lund University Libraries has launched phase 2 of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, http://www.doaj.org ). The new version of DOAJ now includes records at article level and a search functionality allowing users to search articles in potentially all open access journals.

The directory now contains information about more than 1100 open access journals, ie quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web. As of today 270 of the 1100 journals are searchable on article level and both numbers are growing.

Researchers can now search almost 46 000 articles through the Directory and be sure to get access to the articles.

"As a dynamic inventory of open-access journals, DOAJ has already succeeded in demonstrating the broad and growing adoption of open access and has enabled libraries to systematically present open-access journals to their users", said Rick Johnson, Director of SPARC. "Now, by adding article-level records, DOAJ is taking an important next step that will further expand use of articles published in open-access journals. SPARC is proud to support this ground-breaking work."

"The DOAJ provides a platform for open access journals to gain greater visibility and thereby increase their readership", said Melissa Hagemann, Program Manager, Open Society Institute. Libraries throughout the world have thus far been able to add 1100 peer-reviewed titles to their collections, and no where is this more important than to libraries in the developing world, where access to journals is limited due to the high cost of most titles. With today's launch of phase 2 of the Directory, researchers will now be able to search, and have direct access to, the thousands of articles included within the DOAJ. OSI is pleased to partner w/Lund University Libraries and SPARC on this innovative project."

"With this new article-level search functionality we have created an incentive for owners of open access journals to submit article level data to the DOAJ in order to further increase the visibility, reputation and impact of their journals", said Lotte Jorgensen, Project Coordinator for the DOAJ.

The goal of the Directory of Open Access Journals is to increase the visibility and accessibility of open access scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The directory aims to comprehensively cover all open access scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control system.

The DOAJ is funded by the Information Program of the Open Society Institute www.osi.hu/infoprogram/ and Lund University Libraries, and supported by SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, (www.arl.org/sparc ) and BIBSAM (the Royal Library of Sweden).

Information about how to obtain DOAJ records for use in a library catalogue or other service you will find at: www.doaj.org/articles/questions#metadata

The database records are freely available for reuse in other services and can be harvested by using the OAI-PMH (www.openarchives.org/), thus further increasing the visibility of the journals. The article level records will be available for harvesting within 2 months.

Further information

Contact Project Co-ordinator Lotte Jorgensen:
lotte.jorgensen@lub.lu.se  or