Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by Jordy Findanis and Niels Stern. Jordy is Project Manager at OAPEN and the Directory of Open Access Books and also works on the Copim Open Book Futures Project. Niesl is Managing Director of the OAPEN Foundation and has worked in scholarly publishing for more than 20 years. Part 1 of the post is available here.

Revising DOAB’s criteria

As the landscape of scholarly communication evolves and The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) engages with globally diverse publishing communities, there is also a corresponding need to revisit and refine the workflows and standards that inform our own work at DOAB. This also applies to the criteria and requirements that have been set in place for participating publishers to ensure that we can continue to uphold the rigorous academic standards of the scholarship we disseminate. As we see a growing number of applications from across the globe, we believe it is important to be even more explicit and transparent in articulating these requirements.

In an attempt to mitigate the workload of the DOAB evaluation team and not least of applying publishers, the full list of requirements and recommendations in addition to those strictly relating to peer review and open licensing have now been published on the DOAB website. In this way, we hope to promote best practices for publishers generally, but also specifically to support prospective publishers in their preparatory work prior to submitting their application to DOAB. This can potentially reduce the amount of post-submission correspondence and publisher remediation work — the latter being the adverse cause of potentially delaying the inclusion of the publisher’s content in the index.

Of course, we are mindful of the fact that DOAB operates within a complex and interdependent scholarly communications ecosystem, serving a broad range of stakeholders who rely on our services, including researchers, publishers, libraries, funders and of course other users of our services around the world. Thus, enmeshed in a wider ecosystem, operationally and technically, we are also conscious that sudden and significant changes in DOAB’s operations can be potentially disruptive, with downstream ramifications affecting partners and users. Sudden and drastic changes without attending to transparency and consultation can raise serious concerns about unilateral actions and their impact on trust in the scholarly ecosystem.

Community Consultation and Collaboration

In this respect, it is of crucial importance that any change to DOAB’s operations are informed through extensive community consultation, involving feedback from stakeholders most likely to be affected by the changes. Through the years we have been gathering feedback from numerous publishers from around the world, so it is of course natural to let this experience shape the recent change in criteria. The amendments have been further developed by the evaluation team in close coordination with the DOAB Executive and Supervisory Boards as well as the DOAB Scientific Committee. In this way, we have been able to collect informative feedback from a broad range of practitioners, stakeholders and scholarly communications experts from many different regions.

These changes aim to enhance transparency and improve workflows, while also supporting publishers by clarifying expectations. Importantly, DOAB does not see itself as a gatekeeper enforcing rigid criteria. Instead, it aims to support publishers by offering guidance and encouragement that will help them along the path to eligibility. There is, for instance, a huge archipelago of small existing and emerging publishers who are taking their first tentative steps in the realm of OA, who might not currently be in scope of our criteria but who are on the right trajectory and need support. Part of DOAB’s mission is to promote the transition to OA, so supporting through advocacy and signposting to tools and resources is equally important in promoting best practices and supporting quality publishing. Recognizing the diversity of publishing practices across disciplines, languages, and regions, DOAB remains committed to an inclusive and flexible approach that supports bibliodiversity while maintaining high standards of scholarly integrity.

DOAB Trusted Platform Network

The importance of trust is also reflected by the community of platforms that currently constitute the DOAB Trusted Platform Network, including the OAPEN Library, OpenEdition, Project MUSE, SciELO Books, JSTOR, the African Platform for Open Scholarship, Fulcrum and Thoth Open Metadata. In addition to enhancing the discoverability of OA books and creating a more seamless process for publishers to list their books in DOAB, the network is an important conduit for delegating trust within the wider publishing community and enables shared responsibility for quality assurance. The network benefits significantly from the access to evaluation support and local expertise within different national and regional publishing contexts. This is a vital mechanism for maintaining high academic standards across very different research and publishing communities, while also fostering diversity.

In consultation with DOAB’s boards, the DOAB evaluation team is currently preparing a survey to examine how criteria are applied across all trusted platforms. The goal is to develop an aligned evaluation framework for future platforms to join the network.

Trust and Accountability
While trust — and the responsible delegation of it — is a cornerstone of DOAB’s approach, particularly through its model of evaluating publishers rather than individual books and its collaboration with a network of trusted platforms, this trust is underpinned by a firm commitment to accountability. DOAB takes the threat of questionable publishing practices and research integrity breaches extremely seriously. To that end, it conducts regular spot checks on indexed publishers and actively encourages its community to report any content or practices they find questionable. This vigilance helps ensure that the trust placed in the system is not blind, but continually earned and reinforced through shared responsibility and transparency.

Toward a Global Community of Practice

Finally, we would like to draw attention to a workshop on evaluation and criteria-setting practices that DOAB co-convened with the Open Book Collective, bringing together representatives from the Trusted Platform Network, the Copim Open Book Futures project, and other initiatives. A key theme was the diversity of criteria-setting practices in the OA ecosystem. While this diversity reflects the richness of global scholarship, it can also lead to exclusionary practices — especially when Global North standards dominate.

Workshop participants expressed strong support for creating a global community of practice around quality assessment and criteria in OA book publishing. Such a community could facilitate dialogue, share knowledge, and develop more equitable, globally informed evaluation frameworks.

DOAB believes that only through collaborative, inclusive efforts can the OA book publishing community foster bibliodiversity while ensuring academic rigor and trust.

Conclusion and Next Steps

In conclusion, DOAB will continue its endeavor to enhance trust and transparency within the OA book publishing landscape. By establishing rigorous criteria for inclusion, such as independent peer review and clear editorial processes, DOAB is committed to ensuring the dissemination of high-quality, scholarly works. Additionally, DOAB’s collaborative approach through the Trusted Platform Network facilitates a global, inclusive, and scalable model for OA publishing. Through continuous engagement with the academic community and a commitment to transparency, DOAB remains committed to supporting the dissemination of trusted and diverse scholarly knowledge worldwide.