Steps towards quality of open access publishing

"Launched in 2003, the DOAJ project has passed a long way and become a ‘whitelist’ of reliable periodicals. The DOAJ collaborated with several global editorial associations to set principles of transparency in publishing.14 The declared by the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology adherence to these principles is essential for its development and ethical promotion. Acquiring the seal of DOAJ is a milestone in the journal digitization and recognition by the scientific community.15,16 For medical journals, the DOAJ listing is proposed as one of the requirements for indexing by PubMed and archiving by PubMed Central.17 In 2015, the Scopus database introduced the open access indicator for separate marking DOAJ-listed journals, making it easier to navigate and search through the growing number of open-access periodicals which passed stringent quality checks.18 Notably, the SCImago Journal & Country Rank platform currently ranks 34,171 Scopus-indexed periodicals across all subject categories, including 4,504 for open access. In the field of rheumatology there are 60 Scopus-indexed periodicals, with 20 registered with DOAJ (https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?- category=2745). These numbers will definitely continue to grow in the future...."