The Quality Open Access Market (QOAM) and OpenAIRE : OpenAIRE blog

" ... The role of libraries in supporting researchers to make appropriate publication choices in an Open Access environment is a frequently discussed topic these days. This covers, among others, supporting compliance with funder OA mandates, understanding the various OA models, payment of publication fees, evaluating journal quality and telling reliable from predatory publishers ... This is precisely the idea behind the Quality Open Access Market – QOAM – founded three years ago by two volunteers, Leo Waaijers and Saskia de Vries. With help from the Radboud University and SURFmarket they have set up an academic agora where libraries and authors work closely together. Libraries contribute by completing so called Base Score Cards, measuring the transparency of journal web sites in showing information on the editorial board, the peer review process, the workflow and the governance of a journal. Authors share their real life experience with the journal via Valuation Score Cards. Together these two scores, both running from 1 to 5, enable a division of the journals into fourSWOT-categories: Strong, Weaker, Opportunity (for publishers), Threat (to authors). Next to this, QOAM provides information on publication fees, not only those quoted on journal web sites, but also the discounts negotiated in recently settled national of institutional OA-licences ..."