JournalFees and DOAJ: what each is for
DOAJ is the authoritative index of open-access journals — around 23,000 of them, curated by a respected non-profit. We are not a rival to it. We go deep where it stays broad: what a waiver actually requires, what an agreement covers, and what the fee was last year.
DOAJ records that a waiver exists. We record its conditions — which countries, which author, automatic or on request. DOAJ dates when it last reviewed the record; we date when we last checked the price against the publisher's own page.
Field by field
| DOAJ | JournalFees | |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | ~23,000 fully-OA (gold/diamond) journals | ~100 now, hybrids being added — depth over breadth |
| APC detail | Maximum amount, self-declared by the publisher | apc_usd / apc_chf, apc_updated, priced_at, pricing model |
| Price history | Annual metadata snapshots (Zenodo) | apc_history[] with year-by-year change, from open datasets |
| Freshness date | Updated; Last Full Review Date (record review) | apc_updated — the date we re-checked the price on the publisher's page |
| Waiver | A yes/no flag plus a link to the publisher | Which countries, which author counts, automatic or on request |
| Read-and-publish | Not covered | agreements — which deal covers which journal |
| Business model | S2O, mirror, Open Journals Collective flags | pricing model + a former-diamond ("used to be free") tracker |
| Indexing status | Not covered | Scopus / Web of Science status, with delisting dates |
| Deep metadata | 50+ fields: licence, archiving, peer review | We link out to DOAJ for these rather than duplicate them |
| What it answers | Is this a legitimate OA journal, and does it charge? | From my country, in this journal, what will I actually pay? |
Where DOAJ is stronger — and we defer to it
Breadth is DOAJ's, not ours: 23,000 journals to our ~100, and 50-plus metadata fields per journal — licence, archiving policy, peer-review type, editorial process — that we do not duplicate and instead link to. DOAJ's records are self-declared by publishers and moderated by DOAJ editors, and its newer signals (Subscribe-to-Open, mirror journals, the Open Journals Collective, and a Last Full Review Date) are genuinely useful. If you want to know whether a journal is a legitimate open-access venue, start at DOAJ.
Why we check the primary source
For one journal — PLOS ONE — secondary trackers currently report $1,695, $1,931 and $2,477. Only one is right. We read the figure from plos.org/fees and stamp the date we read it. That is the difference between a number you can cite in a grant and a number you have to double-check.