ISSN International Centre @ IFLA WLIC 2021: How open access affects serials assessment

The number of open access scholarly journals has increased six-fold according to statistics published in the ISSN International Center’s 2020 annual report regarding the development of the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD) service. Publishers who manage a portfolio of open access journals wish to optimize the impact of these resources in indexing databases and improve their bibliometric indexes. Librarians and researchers want to reference titles that best meet commonly accepted editorial quality criteria. But what about the emergence of questionable journals? Their editors are more eager to cash in on author processing charges (APCs) than to provide a quality service to authors.

Dr Gaëlle Béquet, Director of ISSN International Centre, chaired this session organized by IFLA Serials and Other Continuing Resources Section. The session included Mathias Astell, Hindawi; Ana María Cetto, Latindex; Kate Snow, African Journal Online (AJOL); Leena Shah, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). They presented the quality criteria they have developed and implemented in their respective services for the benefit of librarians and researchers worldwide.

Watch this session and view the presentations from the IFLA WLIC 2021 website (registration required).

Gaëlle Béquet’s introduction can be viewed on Slideshare.