Developing an OJS tool to support journal applications for DOAJ indexing

Kevin Stranack

Funding Area: Critical shared infrastructure / Infraestructura compartida critica

Problem Statement: In the current knowledge environment offering readers a basis for confidence in the reliability and quality of their sources is a significant challenge. Fortunately, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a trusted source of quality, peer reviewed scholarly journals. DOAJ currently indexes nearly 20,000 journals, but it is not comprehensive. Roughly forty percent of the close to 20,000 journals that DOAJ indexes use the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Journal Systems (OJS), with a great many more of the 34,000+ journals using OJS likely eligible for inclusion in DOAJ. The process of submitting an application for DOAJ is manual, and can be time-consuming and daunting for journal editors. The project seeks to address this problem by simplifying the process for OJS journals to apply to DOAJ. The plan is for PKP to develop, in a coordinated effort with DOAJ, an application tool that will provide journal editors, managers and publishers with the means of harvesting standardized and comprehensive application data for DOAJ evaluators to review. The data availability will improve the evaluation, with the potential to reduce the time needed for clarifying and verifying data at journal websites. The goal is to increase the number of OJS journals accepted by DOAJ for the benefit of researchers and readers. Improved seamless integrations between the widely-used open infrastructures of both DOAJ and OJS will be a boon for open access journals globally.

Proposed Activities: 1. (2023/11/01) INITIAL REVIEW AND SCOPING: DOAJ and PKP will meet to review the DOAJ application form and other assessment criteria to determine which fields and data already exist within the OJS database (e.g., journal title, etc.) and how best to standardize data formatting for the application, while exploring opportunities for verification checks (e.g., peer review reports submitted). 2. (2023/12/01) ADDRESS MISSING DATA POINTS: PKP will review application data points which are not currently available in the OJS database and, through enhanced user interface, determine ways of soliciting, capturing, verifying, and including these points in populating the DOAJ application. 3. (2024/01/01) BUILD DATA EXPORT FEATURE: PKP will develop an export feature for compiling the application data, submitting it to journal staff for review, and delivering it to DOAJ for evaluation. 4. (2024/04/01) TESTING THE APPLICATION TOOL: The new features would be tested through a thorough process of UI/UX testing. The tool will be piloted by a series of journals using OJS seeking entry into DOAJ through the submission and evaluation stages. All shortcomings and bugs will be subject to correction prior to general release. 5. (2024/05/01) INTRODUCING AND PROMOTING THE APPLICATION TOOL: A joint publicity campaign will be planned and executed by DOAJ and PKP to raise awareness of the new tool with a focus on its advantages as well as on the value of indexing in DOAJ and the adherence to scholarly standards that it represents. 6. (2025/05/01) TOOL EVALUATION: An evaluation process for the applications tool will be conducted at the end of the first year of general release to review its effectiveness with the community (see #10. Success below), and will include the extent of use, changes in DOAJ application levels,, and changes in DOAJ evaluation efficiency.

Openness: The DOAJ application tool will be built for the OJS platform, which is completely free and open source software (FOSS), licensed under GPL 3. The tool itself will be released as FOSS and be made available for adoption or as a model for other publishing platforms to use with open access journals. While the tool development activities will initially engage experts from PKP and DOAJ, the process will also come to involve the broad community of journals using OJS to test and pilot the application tool to ensure the effectiveness of its design and functionality. The tool will be a likely subject, for example, in the PKP Community Forum, which involves thousands of OJS users in discussing the development and progress of PKP tools and platforms.

Challenges: The welcomed challenges involved in developing this DOAJ application tool for journals using OJS will begin with hiring a skilled PHP developer familiar with the OJS platform to undertake this work. The challenges will include finding ways to capture as much of the DOAJ data as possible through automated data capture. It will involve providing high quality, comprehensive data, an aspect of which will entail looking for internal verification processes to further ensure that quality. The challenges will also include designing an effective adoption campaign that will bring a greater proportion of open access journals to DOAJ as a means of providing researchers and readers. An additional challenge will be adapting the new tools to the rich number of languages that participate in both PKP and the DOAJ, and raising awareness of the tool in those regions.

Neglectedness: A DOAJ application tool is a new concept, which was recently developed at a meeting between the DOAJ and PKP at the PKP Sprint hosted by Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. As it will be designed to enhance the interoperability between two instances of open infrastructure, with potential use by other publishing platforms used by open access journals, there are limited funding opportunities given that the major players in this space (e.g., Arcadia Fund, Mellon Foundation) more typically favor large-scale developments of complete systems, rather than vital enhancements to open infrastructure that serve scholarly communication in more subtle ways.

Success: Success would be measured in two ways: The effective operation of the application tool’s feature set as outlined above. This would be measured through a community awareness and satisfaction survey that would examine the (a) clarity of purpose and terms of the tool, (b) the tool’s ease of use for first-time users, and (c) the success rate for applications on initial submission. The growth in the use of the new tool by OJS journal managers, editors, and publishers over the first 12 months of implementation. This would be checked with comparisons of DOAJ applicant numbers over previous years, as well as the current year, with a focus on journals using OJS.

Total Budget: $25000

Affiliations: Infrastructure Services for Open Access; The Public Knowledge Project

LMIE Carveout: This project fits within the LMIE carve out. While the administrative centers of our organizations and the majority of our team members are in Europe and North America, among the 34,000+ journals using OJS, it has been determined that 55.3% are in countries judged by the World Bank to be LMIE Low- and Middle-Income Economies (see Khanna et al., 2022 https://direct.mit.edu/qss/article/3/4/912/114119/Recalibrating-the-scope-of-scholarly-publishing-A).

Team Skills: PKP has been developing tools for OJS for 25 years and working with DOAJ for two decades. The PKP team consists of well-experienced developers, UI/UX experts, and community support staff. It is in touch with its community of users and has successfully launched not just tools but additional platforms, such as Open Monograph Press and, most recently, Open Preprint System. PKP also has a research wing, currently engaged in developing and researching journal integrity tools that will also contribute to the effectiveness of this DOAJ application tool, much as the tool will also do its part for journal integrity. This research includes bibliometric and system tracking of journals using OJS, which will assist in the evaluation of the DOAJ application tool.

How Did You Hear About This Call: Word of mouth (e.g. conversations and emails from IOI staff, friends, colleagues, etc.) / Boca a boca (por ejemplo, conversaciones y correos electrónicos del personal del IOI, amigos, colegas, etc.)

Submission Number: 170