Open Society Institute and SPARC Support Far-Reaching Library Project

Washington, DC - The Information Program of the Open Society Institute, along with SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and Lund University Libraries, Sweden, today announced the establishment of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)http://www.doaj.org

. The project will create a directory of open access journals and will be completed in late spring 2003.

The Directory of Open Access Journals aims to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The Directory will comprehensively cover all open access scientific journals that use an appropriate quality control system, and it will not be limited to particular languages or subject areas.

The DOAJ will be implemented in two phases. During the first half, the Directory itself will be established. The second phase involves developing a comprehensive search system for article-level content. Phase two will begin in late spring 2003.

To ensure the wide dissemination of the directory, the Open Society Institute will work with the eIFL Network http://www.eifl.net, an umbrella organization for national library consortia in nearly 50 countries, to make the directory available to more than 3,000 libraries developing countries.

"Open access journals can compete with traditional subscription-based journals if librarians and users are made aware of these titles, and the Directory of Open Access Journals is the way to publicize their existence," said Melissa Hagemann, Program Manager of the Open Access Program at the Open Society Institute. "We believe the Directory will become a major reference tool for the scholarly communications community, and we are proud to be able to collaborate with Lund University and SPARC to support the development of this important project."

"The Directory of Open Access Journals is a much-needed effort to insure open access journals are fully integrated into library services and that they deliver on the promise of expanded access and increased impact for research," said Rick Johnson, SPARC Enterprise Director. "New open-access titles are coming on-line all the time, and the financial debacle stemming from the recent demise of subscription agent RoweCom/Faxon drives home yet another compelling argument for open access publishing. SPARC is proud to collaborate with Lund University Libraries on this ground-breaking development effort."

"Lund University Libraries deeply believes in the movement towards open access to scientific information," said Lars Björnshauge, Director, Lund University Libraries. "This partnership with the Open Society Institute and SPARC will facilitate easy access to the many high-quality journals that are offered free of charge, thus moving scholarly communications into the next phase."

To include an open-access journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals, please contact Sara Kjellberg, sara.kjellberg@lub.lu.se.