The Open Journal of Astrophysics is now in the Directory of Open Access Journals!

One of the things I did during the recent Covid-19 campus closure was to complete an application for the Open Journal of Astrophysics to be indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOJA).

I did apply late last year but there was an issue with the registration of the ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) which had not been done correctly when it was issued by the National Library of Ireland. That was easily fixed but DOAJ requires unsuccessful applicants to wait six months before applying again.

Getting listed on DOAJ is by no means trivial. The criteria are rather strict and the application form rather lengthy. All of which means that I was delighted to learn today that my application was successful this time, and we’re now listed.

To prove it here is our entry:

Apart from the intrinsic usefulness of being indexed, being listed on DOAJ is one of the criteria for being an acceptable Open Access publisher for some funding agencies, including those who have signed up for Plan S.

I also imagine that our being on DOAJ might convince new authors to submit to us!

All I have to do now is figure out how to add our papers and metadata to the DOAJ and find the time to do it.

P. S. The Directory of Open Access Journals also has a WordPress blog which you can find here!

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The Open Journal of Astrophysics: Last Update for 2018

As term staggers to its close tomorrow, two things this morning reminded me that I should post a final update for the The Open Journal of Astrophysics.  I’ve been regularly boring all my readers with a stream of stuff about the Open Journal of Astrophysics, but if it’s all new to you, try reading the short post about the background to the Open Journal project that you can find here.

The first item was a little piece in the latest edition of University News (which was delivered this morning) about the launch event for the journal here at Maynooth University way back in October.

I didn’t make it into the picture above as I had to leave the event before the end in order to give an undergraduate lecture, but the appearance of this piece reminds me to express once more my gratitude to Maynooth for providing such excellent support for this project.

The other event this morning was an email notification that the OJA has received yet another submission. We now have a number of papers in the pipeline, and interest seems to be picking up. I can’t say how many submissions will actually be published, but the papers we have received are working their way through the peer-review system and we’ll see what transpires.

On a related point, a few people have asked me why the Open Journal of Astrophysics is not in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The answer to that is simply that DOAJ requires a minimum of five papers published in a calendar year and because we had a long hiatus before the re-launch we don’t yet qualify. The way things are going we should meet the threshold for 2019 pretty quickly.

Though I stress that the Editorial Board of OJA is not going to compromise standards just to get listed on DOAJ.
we are hoping to increase the number of submissions with time (in a manageable way). As it happens, we do have funds available to promote the OJA as I think quite a large number of members of the astrophysics community still haven’t heard of it. This also makes it a little difficult to enlist referees who perhaps jump to the conclusion that this is a dodgy or predatory journal. There are many of these about, sadly, but I hope we can establish relatively easily the fact that we’re not of that ilk.

I would like here to repeat a small request I posted a while ago. Do any of you have any ideas for promoting The Open Journal of Astrophysics? We could advertise directly in journals of course, but I’m wondering if anyone out there in the interwebs has any more imaginative ideas? If you do please let me know through the comments box below.

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