Quality Assurance in Open Access Journals: Lessons from Rejection

The Texas Digital Library hosts 76 open access journals across 11 institutions. While all the journals practice diamond open access models (they are both free to authors and readers), only 7 are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). DOAJ sets a high standard for open access journals, one that is greatly needed to ensure the quality of open access publishing and to fight the negative stereotypes that surround the practice. This year, TDL’s OJS User Group set out to determine whether their journals met this standard.

Texas State University’s World Journal for Sand Therapy Practice attempted to apply to DOAJ in January of 2024 and got rejected, despite undergoing reviews by both the journal manager and digital publishing librarian prior to submission. This prompted the User Group to look more deeply at the criteria for acceptance and determine how to best help our journal managers achieve a high-quality product for their readers.

This Idea Lab Session will briefly discuss the events that led to our interest in reviewing journal standards and then move on to a look into DOAJ criteria. We will discuss our failure points in the application process and where we think others might also struggle. We will then open the floor to discussion and input from participants to share their own experiences or interest in the topic. We hope to gain valuable insight both into areas for improvement in the DOAJ criteria and for potential future workshops on the topic.