Lars Bjørnshauge: Open Access journals, quality, visibility and how DOAJ promotes transparency in OA journal publishing!

The presentation will focus on the various aspect that are of importance to the quality and transparency of open access journals. The various stakeholders in scholarly communication - researchers, research managers, university management and research funders - need easy tools to judge the processes and performance of open access journals, not to forget libraries and librarians, in their role of providing advice and managing open access publishing funds.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ - www.doaj.org) have during the last 30 months implemented much more detailed inclusion criteria for journals to be or stay listed in DOAJ. In May DOAJ removed 3.000 of the then 11.500 journals, due lack of re-application for staying listed on the part of these journals.

DOAJ is constantly - with the help of the community - reviewing the journals listed. In addition to that DOAJ is involved in activities to promote best practice in (open access) publishing and raising awareness of unethical business behaviour of questionable journals.

The presentation will give an overview of these activities, all contributing to increasing the attractivity of open access journals.