Community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals – “Whitelist”. Prefers to use the term “questionable”, rather than predatory.
DOAJ changed policies a 2 ½ years ago to apply more rigorous criteria in their review of open access journals to be included in the directory. Asked publishers to “re-apply” and get reviewed for inclusion in the directory. Being included in DOAJ means that a journal has passed up to four stages of independent and objective manual review
Two categories that indicate higher levels of compliance to best practices
Green tick = accepted after March 2014 / higher level of compliance to best practices and publishing standards
Orange Seal = A mark of certification for open access journals, awarded by DOAJ to journals that achieve the high level of compliance
No tick = in the process of re-applying under new criteria
CAUTION – predatory publishers will advertise that they are in DOAJ, and that they are indexed in reputable databases, this must be verified
Conduct a search in library database for articles that are similar or related to your research. Which journals do those articles appear in?
What publications do you turn to for finding quality research?
Trade association - Open Access (OA) journal and book publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines.
Membership criteria address many of the concerns about “predatory” publishing
Open Access Spectrum (OAS) Evaluation Tool quantitatively scores journals' degrees of openness. http://www.oaspectrum.org
A checklist or questions that researchers should be asking themselves when approached by a publishers. http://thinkchecksubmit.org/
Librarians can help guide you in evaluating the authenticity of a publisher. Contact your liaison librarian for more help.