In Vitro and In Vivo Potential of Human Stem Cell-Derived Conditioned Medium (Secretome) and Exosomes as a Novel Treatment for Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review of Experimental Studies

Open Access: DOAJ and Plan S, Digitization and Disruption

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report results of a study which investigated the growth of open access (OA) journals across the world with reference to the Asian region. Details of 117 OA journals were collected from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to determine the geographic distribution, language of publication and growth of periodical year-wise. The study makes detail analysis of four OA periodical published from India, Iran, Pakistan and Taiwan. Pattern of authorship and contribution according to nature of professional work were analyzed. The study reveals that most contributions were made by teaching professionals in comparison to working library and information officers. Single-authored contributions dominated (44 per cent) in all periodicals of the Asian region, indicating low amount of teamwork/collaborative contributions to library and information science (LIS) research by the authors of this region. To know the subject distribution of articles, the study was limited to 27 ...

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is the world’s most authoritative list of scholarly, peer-reviewed, fully open access journals, and a “must” for libraries of all types. As of August 2007, DOAJ includes over 2,800 titles, over 10% of the world’s estimated 20-25,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journal titles. This is an impressive list; in terms of numbers of titles, DOAJ compares favorably with commercial journal packages. DOAJ is growing rapidly, at a rate of more than one title per calendar day. DOAJ’s highly functional and aesthetically pleasing interface features a number of search options, including a new search option for authors looking for open access or hybrid journals to publish in. DOAJ is freely available, and working towards economic sustainability through an optional membership / sponsorship program. This article examines the DOAJ membership program in some depth. Membership fees for libraries and library consortia are an incredible bargain. The membership fee for DOAJ’s 2,800 (and growing) title list is less than the average subscription cost for a single journal in any scientific discipline, and DOAJ represents significant staff time savings for libraries. The promotional benefits of DOAJ membership are important to position libraries for leadership in the internet age, and especially in the key emerging area of scholarly communications. DOAJ is a very popular service among libraries, with a strong reputation for quality; membership or sponsorship is likely to be highly beneficial to library service providers. As a free resource, DOAJ is strongly recommended for all libraries. DOAJ titles can be included in A-Z journal lists, library catalogues or websites, and subject-specific URLs can be added to subject guides or pathfinders.

Background: Open access (OA) journals disseminate research papers free of charge to the reader. Traditionally, biomedical researchers use databases like MEDLINE and EMBASE to discover new advances. However, biomedical OA journals might not fulfil such databases’ criteria, hindering dissemination. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a database searchable at article level, focusing exclusively on OA journals. The aim of this study was to investigate DOAJ’s coverage of biomedical OA journals compared with the conventional biomedical databases. Methods: Information on all journals listed in five conventional biomedical databases (MEDLINE, National Library of Medicine, PubMed Central, EMBASE and SCOPUS) and DOAJ were gathered. Journals were included if they were 1) actively publishing, 2) full OA, 3) prospectively indexed in one or more database, and 4) of biomedical subject. Impact factor and journal language were also collected. DOAJ was compared with conventional databases regarding the proportion of journals covered, along with their impact factor and publishing language. The proportion of journals with articles indexed by DOAJ was determined. Results: In total, 3,236 biomedical OA journals were included in the study. Of the included journals, 86.7% were listed in DOAJ. Combined, the conventional biomedical databases listed 75.0% of the journals; 18.7 % in MEDLINE; 36.5% in PubMed Central; 51.5% in SCOPUS and 50.6% in EMBASE. Of the journals in DOAJ, 88.7% published in English and 20.6% had received impact factor for 2012 compared with 93.5% and 26.0%, respectively, for journals in the conventional biomedical databases. Of journals exclusively listed in DOAJ, only one had received an impact factor. A subset of 51.1% and 48.5% of the journals in DOAJ had articles indexed from 2012 and 2013, respectively. Conclusions: DOAJ is the most complete registry of biomedical OA journals compared with five conventional biomedical databases. However, DOAJ only indexes articles for half of the biomedical journals listed, making it an incomplete source for biomedical research papers in general.

Background. Open access (OA) journals allows access to research papers free of charge to the reader. Traditionally, biomedical researchers use databases like MEDLINE and EMBASE to discover new advances. However, biomedical OA journals might not fulfill such databases’ criteria, hindering dissemination. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a database exclusively listing OA journals. The aim of this study was to investigate DOAJ’s coverage of biomedical OA journals compared with the conventional biomedical databases.Methods. Information on all journals listed in four conventional biomedical databases (MEDLINE, PubMed Central, EMBASE and SCOPUS) and DOAJ were gathered. Journals were included if they were (1) actively publishing, (2) full OA, (3) prospectively indexed in one or more database, and (4) of biomedical subject. Impact factor and journal language were also collected. DOAJ was compared with conventional databases regarding the proportion of journals covered, along with their impact factor and publishing language. The proportion of journals with articles indexed by DOAJ was determined.Results. In total, 3,236 biomedical OA journals were included in the study. Of the included journals, 86.7% were listed in DOAJ. Combined, the conventional biomedical databases listed 75.0% of the journals; 18.7% in MEDLINE; 36.5% in PubMed Central; 51.5% in SCOPUS and 50.6% in EMBASE. Of the journals in DOAJ, 88.7% published in English and 20.6% had received impact factor for 2012 compared with 93.5% and 26.0%, respectively, for journals in the conventional biomedical databases. A subset of 51.1% and 48.5% of the journals in DOAJ had articles indexed from 2012 and 2013, respectively. Of journals exclusively listed in DOAJ, one journal had received an impact factor for 2012, and 59.6% of the journals had no content from 2013 indexed in DOAJ.Conclusions. DOAJ is the most complete registry of biomedical OA journals compared with five conventional biomedical databases. However, DOAJ only indexes articles for half of the biomedical journals listed, making it an incomplete source for biomedical research papers in general.

Academics in the post-Jeffrey Beall era are seeking to find suitable solutions to differentiating reliable from unreliable open access (OA) journals and publishers. After the controversial, vague and unreliable Beall lists of ＂predatory＂ OA journals became defunct on 15 January 2017, two main contenders stepped forward to fill that gap: Cabell's International blacklist and a newly revised Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) whitelist. Although the DOAJ has in fact existed since 2003, it is only in recent years that it has reached prominence, garnering attention after the infamous 2013 Bohannon sting in Science revealed multiple, approximately one in five, Bealllisted ＂predatory＂ OA journals and publishers on the DOAJ lists. The DOAJ conducted a massive clean-up of its lists and continues to undergo constant reevaluation of its members and journals it lists. This paper highlights some of the changes that occurred in the DOAJ, as well as several challenges that remain, highlighting why this whitelist of OA journals and publishers is still far from perfection. Academics are cautioned against relying on any one list such as that held by the DOAJ to avoid repeating the serious errors and misguided approaches that took place when global academia placed blind trust in Beall's lists.

Journal article access: Free, open, and subscription

Publish and perish

Welcome to this fourth issue of the year, a record in the number of issues produced and yes, we continue to receive significant numbers of articles for publication. We appreciate the enthusiasm of authors but ask for their patience in our ability to process, peer review and publish. Exciting news for the APJHM was that we have been accepted for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Allowing that organisation to speak for itself, we quote ‘We are absolutely delighted to welcome this journal into DOAJ and look forward to seeing the article metadata soon.’ The benefits of supplying DOAJ with our metadata are said to be: - Statistics show more than 900 000-page views and 300 000 unique visitors a month to DOAJ from all over the world. - Many aggregators, databases, libraries, publishers, and search portals collect DOAJ free metadata and include it in their products. Examples are Scopus, Serial Solutions and EBSCO. - DOAJ is OAI compliant and once an article is in DOAJ, it is automatically harvestable. - DOAJ is Open URL compliant and once an article is in DOAJ, it is automatically linkable. - Over 95% of the DOAJ Publisher community said that DOAJ is important for increasing their journal's visibility - DOAJ is often cited as a source of quality, open access journals in research and scholarly publishing circles.' This is encouraging news for our authors, readers the ACHSM and SHAPE who are involved and supportive of the APJHM.The first article in this issue is an important commentary from the National President of ACHSM, Dr Neale Fong, who provides insights into leadership and management in the Covid_19 period, the positioning of the College and its offerings at this time and an announcement about the commencement of a certification process for College members. The editorial again addresses the continuing progress of Covid-19 internationally. The editorial focusses on lessons learned across a number of nation states with a hope that this will encourage health professionals, policy makers, politicians, communities to reflect on the experience so far and develop a reasonably consistent framework and strategy that might improve future approaches to pandemic management. We would welcome contributions in this context. Turato and Oprescu describe enablers for allied health front-line managers in public health environments to deliver sustainable patient care in a review article in the Australian context. This article is followed by Yousef Yaghoobi and colleagues designing an empowerment model for Iranian health centre managers: A comprehensive study that examine empowerment models for Iranian health centre managers to develop capabilities and competencies for this group. Muddle in a research article describes the relationship between leadership style and hospital employee engagement in Papua New Guinea. Arya provides a distinctly unique contribution in being a fine detective in learning health leadership lessons to conclude this group of articles particularly relevant to health management. The next group of articles commences with the contribution of Bain, Goswami, Lloyd and Davis describing the post-implementation evaluation of a digital dictation system in a large health service using HOT-Fit framework, in Victoria Australia. This is followed by an article by seven colleagues from Iran that provides a research article on the assessment of staff performance in a CSSD unit using a 360-degree evaluation method. A further group of colleagues from Iran have also provided systematic review and meta-analysis of the care burden of informal care givers of haemodialysis patients, concluding that we should develop appropriate strategies to improve the quality of life for this group.The next contribution from Yadav from India provides a comparative study of health as an economic dimension in respect to China and India. Colleagues from Nepal, Thailand and Australia make a topical contribution entitled ‘infodemic monikers in social media during the covid-19 pandemic. Das and colleagues provide a contribution that addresses community preparedness and responses to prevention and control of Covid_19 in Bangladesh. As usual we conclude with our library bulletin provided by Yaping Liu.

The costs of Open Access publishing increase year by year (e.g. Zhang et al. 2022). Diamond Open Access (OA), in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers, has been hoped to provide solutions for the current situation. Also, the Council of the EU highlights the importance of Diamond OA in the recent Council Conclusions (8827/23). Various incentives, such as Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, DIAMAS and Craft-OA are established to support the development of Diamond OA. However, do researchers really use Diamond OA publication venues? Is Diamond OA a researcher’s best friend or just a rarely met distant relative? Both international (Bosman et al. 2021) and national level (Frantsvåg 2022) studies have been conducted in relation with Diamond OA. This poster views the phenomenon on a local level by illustrating Diamond OA publishing at the Finnish Aalto University in 2018–2022. Aalto University consists of six schools: School of Arts, Design and Architecture, School of Business, School of Chemical Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering and School of Science. Aalto Current Research Information System, ACRIS contains the comprehensive publication data of university’s researchers. Information on Diamond OA journals was added to ACRIS journal records in the spring 2023. We identified Diamond OA journals in ACRIS by using Directory of Open Access Journals and journals’ web pages. This information in relation with publication data will form the basis for our analysis. We recognize that information on Diamond OA is incomplete and our results only indicative, since only a third of diamond OA journals are indexed in DOAJ (Bosman et al. 2021). The poster seeks to illustrate the usage of Diamond OA channels from various aspects. How has Diamond OA publishing evolved over the years? Which Diamond OA journals and publishers are the most popular? What are the differences between schools? What is the share of Diamond OA compared with other Open Access types and how has the usage of different Open Access paths evolved?

Currently, there is an apparent lack of Gold Open Access journals in Social Science, Humanities and Arts (SSHA), as showcased by the open letter the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) sent to the SSHA communities 16 May 2019. DOAJ asserts in the letter that they agree 100% that DOAJ’s coverage of SSHA journals is insufficient. The implications of the lack of available outlets for research articles by SSHA grantholders in the early years of Plan S implementation may include disadvantages for researchers in the fields. A mandatory criterion for Plan S compliant OA journals is that they must be registered in the DOAJ. One consequence of the lack of coverage is when SSHA scholars seek funding from any of the research agencies or funders that are part of cOAlition S, as scholars will encounter difficulties in finding relevant quality Gold OA journals in which they can publish their research. This could impair SSHA scholars’ chances of receiving grants. Because of the ongoing and accelerated changes to the scholarly publication landscape today, there is a need to support SSHA communities with identifying quality journals which qualifies as Gold OA. To achieve ‘true’ Gold OA status a journal needs to be indexed in DOAJ, as Gold OA journals are in practice defined by their inclusion in this directory. The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS) provides a curated register of peer reviewed journals in the social sciences, arts and humanities. Today ERIH PLUS includes 7,473 scientific journals, and 2,220 of the journals are also listed by DOAJ. Furthermore, ERIH PLUS covers 1,469,204 scholarly Gold OA publications, according to data from Dimensions. However, less than half of these, 712,135 publications, are today indexed in DOAJ. Dimensions (free version) classifies Gold OA publications in the following way: “Gold – refers to articles in fully accessible open access journals that are available immediately upon publication without a license”. In this project we seek to identify DOAJ inclusion candidates from the group of journals that have published the 757,069 Gold OA publications that are not listed in DOAJ, according to Dimensions data. We will work with editors/editorial staff of journals that we identify as having the potential to be indexed by DOAJ. The goal is to increase the volume of Gold OA journals in SSHA. We will contact, present arguments and provide support to journal editors in order to convince them to apply for inclusion in DOAJ. In the poster, we will outline and describe some of the key tasks for the project in order to reach our goal. The project that we will briefly outline will center on: Describing incentives for obtaining ‘true’ Gold OA status for SSHA journals Identifying journals in ERIH PLUS for possible DOAJ inclusion Efforts to flip SSHA journals to ‘true’ Gold OA

Human stromal (mesenchymal) stem cells (hMSC) represent a group of non-hematopoietic stem cells present in the bone marrow stroma and the stroma of other organs including subcutaneous adipose tissue, placenta, and muscles. They exhibit the characteristics of somatic stem cells of self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation into mesoderm-type of cells, e.g., to osteoblasts, adipocytes, chondrocytes and possibly other cell types including hepatocytes and astrocytes. Due to their ease of culture and multipotentiality, hMSC are increasingly employed as a source for cells suitable for a number of clinical applications, e.g., non-healing bone fractures and defects and also non-skeletal degenerative diseases like heart failure. Currently, the numbers of clinical trials that employ MSC are increasing. However, several biological and biotechnological challenges need to be overcome to benefit from the full potential of hMSC. In this current review, we present some of the most important and recent advances in understanding of the biology of hMSC and their current and potential use in therapy.

This article gives an overview of the history and current status of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). After a brief historical overview, DOAJ policies regarding open access, intellectual property rights and questionable publishers are explained in detail. The larger part of this article is a much requested explanation on how DOAJ uses its new set of criteria for the evaluation of open access journals and the rationale behind choosing the seven extra criteria that qualify for the DOAJ Seal. A final section is devoted to the extended possibilities that DOAJ will be offering shortly to scholars and publishers for searching the database and for uploading metadata. The result is a renewed DOAJ that offers a more robust platform, a more stable database and enhanced services to allow the upload and collection of metadata.

There are two general strategies for achieving Open Access (OA) to scholarly communication, the gold road and the green road. The largest and authoritative gold road OA database is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexing all the standard OA journals meeting the DOAJ criteria of inclusion. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of Indian publications to the global OA movement. The analysis of the present study was done based on a total dataset of 289 research publications of Indian OA journal as imported from the DOAJ database. The findings of the study reveal that Indian OA journals account for only 2% of the total coverage of DOAJ. Among them, journals in the field of Medicine alone account for 79% and approximately 73% of journals are published in both print & electronic medium with PDF as the preferred file format, DOI as preferred permanent article identifier and English as the preferred language of publication. Almost 89% of Indian OA journals provide full-text crawl permission, while 75% of them provide download statistics. All the Indian journals covered under DOAJ are peer-reviewed and out of them, most of the journals (76%) are double-blind peer-reviewed. Indian OA publications with CC BY-NC-SA license cover the highest percentage (75%) and 206 journals (71%) do not charge APC. In majority of Indian OA journals (89%), the author doesn’t hold either the copyright or publishing rights without restrictions from the journal publishers. It is important to note that only two journals (~1%) satisfied the requirements of DOAJ Seal.

In 2013, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) expanded and updated its inclusion criteria and its journal evaluation process, ultimately removing a large number of journals that failed to submit an updated application. The present study examined the results of the new process and its capability to improve the quality of the directory and the reliability of the information contained in it. A dataset of 12.595 journals included in DOAJ, since its launch in 2003 until May 15th 2016, was examined and compared to other data. The number of journals deleted from DOAJ during this period is 3776; the majority of them (2851 journals) were excluded because publishers failed to complete the reapplication on time; 490 had ceased publication or were otherwise inactive; 375 were excluded for ethical issues; 53 because they were no longer open access or the content was embargoed, the final 7 were removed for other reasons. The top five countries in terms of the percentage of journals removed are: Japan (74% of journals removed); Pakistan (60%); Canada (51%); United States (50%); and Mexico (49%). Our study has shown that 158 of the removed journals are included in Beall’s lists; 1130 journals indexed in DOAJ are included in Scopus and/or JCR. Our analysis demonstrates that, thanks to the new acceptance criteria, to the improved screening process performed by national groups under the direction of the new management, there is a noticeable quality improvement of the journals indexed in DOAJ.