OASPA Assessment of Single Journal Applications and DOAJ - OASPA

"Since OASPA was established a decade ago we have been committed to demonstrating that open access publishing can be of the highest quality and have worked to achieve this both within our membership and beyond by setting high standards and guiding publishers in best practice. One of the ways we have done this is by having a very strict set of membership criteria which we expect publishers to meet before we approve them to join OASPA, and which we expect them to continue to adhere to as members of the organisation. Over the past few years we have also worked with allied organisations on a set of shared principles of best practice for journals. The recommendations highlight the basic criteria that we all share, and we have often discussed the overlap and duplication in our membership application procedures. In particular we are closely aligned with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and we have been fortunate to have had Lars Bjørnshauge on the OASPA Board for the past few years. Similar to OASPA, the DOAJ have also been refining their review process but, unlike OASPA, have a large team dedicated to handling applications which are evaluated at the journal level rather than at the publisher level. Although the purpose of our organisations is slightly different, we have many similarities in our approach for vetting members for inclusion....

Given the overlap in the screening criteria between DOAJ and OASPA, and that DOAJ is primarily an index of reputable open-access journals, we have agreed with the DOAJ that, with immediate effect, all single journals that apply to OASPA will now be referred to the DOAJ if the journal is not already listed in DOAJ...."