Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

What it is: The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an extensive index of open-access journals from around the world. It is an independent service that indexes scholarly open-access journals and article records. DOAJ evaluates journals against its published inclusion criteria.

DOAJ's approach to open access draws on the Budapest Open Access Initiative's definition of Open Access. It requires that users are given rights to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of articles.

DOAJ's mission is to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language.

What it is used for: DOAJ is primarily used to identify open-access journal titles. Many journals are also searchable at the article level. Article records can be searched using fields such as author and title and, where provided, subject or abstract.

Libraries, funders and governments also use DOAJ to support assessment of compliance with open-access policies or mandates. Researchers use DOAJ to identify journals in which to publish.