Who is In, Who is Out?
In our blog post “Access Denied”, we informed the research and Open Access (OA) community about Verfassungsblog’s removal from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). With the publication of our appeal – which was ultimately rejected by DOAJ – we also announced our intention to initiate a broader discussion with DOAJ and the OA community about the directory’s admission and removal processes. As DOAJ is a central and established instrument in the Open Access movement, we believe this discussion is vital. To enable an open and constructive conversation, I will revisit the arguments from our appeal and connect them to broader issues of Open Access publishing, funding, and DOAJ’s role in this process. Since Matt Hodgkinson, Head of Editorial at DOAJ, has recently published DOAJ’s response, I will engage with some of his key points.
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Access Denied
In January 2025, we were notified that Verfassungsblog had been removed from the DOAJ, our subsequent appeal was rejected. We want to take this as an opportunity and initiate a debate about standards, formats, and diversity of the Diamond OA publishing community. As a first step, DOAJ has kindly permitted us to publish our appeal as well as their appeals decision so that our community and partners are able to follow the respective reasonings.
Continue reading >>Money, Trust and Tools
Verfassungsblog faces the same challenges as any independent, non-profit, and community-led publication platform committed to Diamond Open Access (DOA). Recently, two projects were launched to strengthen DOA as a publishing model across borders and with a global reach. I attended the kick-off conference in Madrid to find out what we can learn from their approach, how we can benefit from their results and in what ways we can get involved to help shape the future of academic publishing.
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