Indexing journals in Directory of Open Access Journals
Improve the reputation and credibility of your Open Access journal
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a database of Open Access (OA) journals, as the name implies. Journals must meet a number of requirements to be indexed in DOAJ. By having your journal indexed in DOAJ, you show that the journal if of the required quality and the journal will achieve increased visibility.
Five good reasons to get your journal admitted into DOAJ
1. Prestige
The Directory of Open Access Journals is one of the world's most influential Open Access services and has advocated 'best practice' and high standards in Open Access. By having your journal indexed in DOAJ, it provides the opportunity for greater prestige and a more prominent position within its field.
2. Standards and 'best practice'
The basic criteria for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals are both an accepted and recognised way of measuring whether an Open Access journal follows the standards of academic publishing. Through the admission criteria, the journal will get help adapting to a number of ethical and quality standards, which will make it a more attractive publishing channel.
3. Funding support
In order to obtain Open Access funding support, it is often a requirement that the applicant publish in journals indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Indexing in DOAJ ensures that your journal complies with the applicable rules for several international initiatives.
4. Visibility and increased internet traffic
Via the Directory of Open Access Journals, metadata from a journal article is distributed to all major RSS readers as well as the many research organisations and university libraries that use DOAJ's widgets, RSS feeds, API (Application Programming Interface) and other services. Indexing in DOAJ increases the visibility of search engines like Google, and it typically generates three times as much traffic to a journal's web page and increases the exposure of the published content.
5. International coverage
DOAJ is the largest Open Access journal database and contains journals from many different countries. DOAJ has built a global editorial team through a network of 'managing editors', ambassadors and volunteers, who do everything they can to provide support locally, and who also guarantee that information about the indexed journals is displayed worldwide.
How do you get your journal indexed in DOAJ?
If you want to have your journal indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, make sure that your journal meets DOAJ's admission requirements (see below).
If your journal meets all the requirements, you can sign up as a user on DOAJ’s website and fill out the application. Below, you can see an example of a completed application. You are very welcome to contact os, if you need help in this process. You can use our contact form.
Admission requirements and guide for application
Read about the basic conditions for admission in DOAJ's application guide.
The guide will also help you through the initial phase of the application to have your journal admitted to DOAJ.
You need to register and fill out an online form with the basic data of your journal.
The web form is in English. If you need a Danish language version of the basic conditions, you will find it here.
Example of completed application
If you need to see an example of a completed application, you can see one here.
Recommendations about academic publishing
DOAJ has made some principles on transparency and best practice in academic publishing. A journal is not required to meet all of these recommendations to be indexed in DOAJ, but we recommend you to read them all and follow as many as possible. Read the recommendations.
Previous project
Copenhagen Business School, Aalborg University, and the university libraries of Royal Danish Library – Aarhus University Library, Copenhagen University Library and Roskilde University Library – cooperated in a project together with DOAJ to promote Danish Open Access journals. The project was initiated in June 2021, and finished in December 2022.
