Endogeny refers to the publishing of articles by editors or members of the editorial or advisory board. DOAJ checks the latest 2 issues of a journal and will reject an application if the number of papers written by members of the editorial team is higher than 25%.
Hi Jeff,
This is quite a new criterion for DOAJ. When we introduced this check the threshold was 20% in the last 2 issues in total - we have adjusted this slightly to 25% in either of the last 2 issues.
I find something appalling about DOAJ indexing a journal. We submit an open access Journal for indexing with DOAJ and to my surprise one of the reason DOAJ state that they would not index the journal is for non-standard IF services (You can see the comment below).
We approach DOAJ for indexing NOT impact factor, so what is their business with another platform services or are they own by Clavariate the owner of web of science that believe only IF service rendered by them is the only standard one? I felt DOAJ monopolism is making them becoming a bully with such act.
The two platform cited in the mail that we received only index the journal and not for impact factor
I see that the DOAJ evaluation communication is just a one-way which seriously show biased towards those of us in the sub-Sahara Africa. There is no room for one to answer any question or address any objective raised during the evaluation, the next you get is do not re-apply until the next 6 months or 3 years thereabout.
Dear Olu Joshua,
The application which you submitted for LAUTECH Journal of Civil and Environmental Studies on 17/Jan/2023 has been rejected as the journal does not meet our basic criteria
Reason for rejection
The journal displays non-standard IF services (International Scientific Indexing, CiteFactor)
DOAJ does not approve of Impact Factors or ranking systems. However we acknowledge that some journals desire to promote their Impact Factor and so we allow this. But there are many services offering other “Impact Factor” services and we believe that these should not be used as they can cause confusion among users.
We certainly are not biased against journals from sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, it is a key aim for DOAJ to include many more journals from the region in order to give them more global visibility.
Can you provide more clarification or details on the following point “To ensure a fair review process, at least 2 independent reviewers must assess each paper”.
By Paper, do you mean every type of paper that is submitted, even Letters and Commentaries?
Would a review done by one of the Editors as one of the min. 2 reviews count in situations where perhaps otherwise a 2nd reviewer cannot be found?
Not all types of papers need to be peer-reviewed. But research content must be peer-reviewed, and it must be clear which papers are reviewed, and which are not.
In exceptional cases, it would be ok for one of the editors to perform one of the reviews, but please make your best efforts to find a second reviewer outside of the board first.
Going through the the OA literature I have reached the understanding that copyright could either be retained by authors or transferred to the publisher.
I also noticed from the following PKP post that if copyright was retained by the author, the publisher can request first right to publish which states: (sometime for specific amount of time)
I’m working with a local publisher to figure out whether they can adapt their policies to make them OA compatible.Whole they are for full redistribution rights and want to have authors retain the copyright, would requesting first right to publish for 3 years be acceptable? seems to be restrictive and not consistent with OA licensing terms. The publisher just doesn’t want to see the article “sold” through other outlets
As I understand, copyright owner is not restricted by license. So would preventing commercial republishing of article be possible if copyright was transferred to the publisher with NC clause?
Apologies for posting this as a reply, as I can’t start a new conversation.
You are right that copyright can be retained by authors or transferred or licensed to the publisher. But best practice in OA is for authors to retain full copyright and publishing rights. The author gives the right of first publication to the publisher - this simply covers publication of the paper in the journal, and once it is published the license applies to users. So it is not acceptable for the publisher to restrict reuse for 3 years afterwards.
If the publisher wants to restrict commercial reuse, then a CC BY-NC license would be appropriate. If the author retains copyright, and licenses non-exclusive commercial rights to the publisher only the author and publisher would be able to use the work commercially. If the publisher doesn’t want the author to be able to use their work commercially, they can ask for exclusive commercial rights from the author, which would mean that only the publisher can use the work commercially - everyone else, including the author, would have to ask the publisher for permission.
I hope this helps! Do let me know if you have any further questions.
Thank you @judith for the response which is indeed helpful.
If a publisher requests exclusive commercial rights, say for three years, would this be a reason to reject a journal’s application to be included in DOAJ?