[GOAL] DOAJ: handmaiden to despots? or, OA, let's talk

[Lars Bjørnshauge]

Hello Heather,

We agree that “Achieving the goals of the movement requires critical
reflection and occasional changes in policy and procedure”. Over the years
DOAJ has done this, listening to the changed and increasing demands from
the community, for instance when in 2014 we implemented substantially
stronger criteria for inclusion which were based on extensive feedback from
the community:
https://blog.doaj.org/2019/08/05/myth-busting-doaj-indexes-predatory-journals/

Earlier today we responded to your statement that we reject open access
journals that would be "suitable venues for critics of the despotic
government”. DOAJ wants to index good quality open access journals, but
they must apply and meet the selection criteria in order to be included. We
might also discuss the issue about “despotic governments”, but currently we
would find it very hard to 1) create selection criteria for DOAJ defining
what constitutes a journal sponsored by a “despotic government” and 2)
agree on a list of such governments.

Best


Lars Bjørnshauge

Managing Director

DOAJ

On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 8:08 AM Heather Morrison <
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca> wrote:

> As any movement grows and flourishes, decisions made will turn out to have
> unforeseen consequences. Achieving the goals of the movement requires
> critical reflection and occasional changes in policy and procedure.The
> purpose of this post is to point out that the Directory of Open Access
> Journals (DOAJ) appears to be inadvertently acting as a handmaiden to at
> least one despotic government, facilitating dissemination of works subject
> to censorship and rejecting open access journals that would be suitable
> venues for critics of the despotic government. There is no blame and no
> immediately obvious remedy, but solving a problem begins with acknowledging
> that a problem exists and inviting discussion of how to avoid and solve the
> problem. OA friends, please consider this such an invitation.
>
> Sustaining the knowledge commons full post:
>
> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/14/doaj-handmaiden-to-despots-or-oa-we-need-to-talk/
>
>
> best,
>
>
> Dr. Heather Morrison
>
> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
>
> Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa
>
> Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight
> Project
>
> sustainingknowledgecommons.org
>
> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
>
> https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
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>


-- 
Lars Bjørnshauge
Managing Director DOAJ (www.doaj.org)

mobile phone: +45 53 51 06 03
Skype-Id: lbj-lub0603 - Twitter: elbjoern0603
e.mail:  e <lars at arl.org>lbjoern0603 at gmail.com
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