Challenges Facing the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) as a Reliable Source of Open Access Publishing Venues

Abstract

Academics in the post-Jeffrey Beall era are seeking to find suitable solutions to differentiating reliable from unreliable open access (OA) journals and publishers. After the controversial, vague and unreliable Beall lists of “predatory” OA journals became defunct on 15 January 2017, two main contenders stepped forward to fill that gap: Cabell’s International blacklist and a newly revised Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) whitelist. Although the DOAJ has in fact existed since 2003, it is only in recent years that it has reached prominence, garnering attention after the infamous 2013 Bohannon sting in Science revealed multiple, approximately one in five, Bealllisted “predatory” OA journals and publishers on the DOAJ lists. T he DOAJ conducted a massive clean-up of its lists and continues to undergo constant reevaluation of its members and journals it lists. This paper highlights some of the changes that occurred in the DOAJ, as well as several challenges that remain, highlighting why this whitelist of A journals and publishers is still far from perfection. Academics are cautioned against relying on any one list such as that held by the DOAJ to avoid repeating the serious errors and misguided approaches that took place when global academia placed blind trust in Beall’s lists.

Keywords

• Blacklists versus whitelists
• Open access
• Predatory behavior
• Unscholarly publishing