About Journals Online
The Journals Online (JOL) is a project that provides advice to journals wishing to publish online, including resource guides and links to suitable technologies and hosting organisations. Focusing on a system developed for groups of journals to publish on community websites, the JOLs provide a cost-effective and secure forum for online journals, which gives them greatest online visibility and discovery.
The JOLs are the result of a partnership between INASP, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and CrossRef. PKP, based in Canada, developed the Open Journals System (OJS) technology which is used by the JOLs to support the development of websites hosting a number of journals. CrossRef maintain a multi-publisher linking network which vastly improves both visibility and accessibility of journal articles.
To develop the JOLs, INASP runs and supports capacity-building workshops to familiarise editors and publishers with online publishing. This assists them to load their own content, manage their editorial systems and make the best use of technology. For full details see the JOL methodology page.
What is included in the JOLs?
The JOLs are databases of journals published in a country or Region (i.e. Bangladesh Journals Online or BanglaJOL) covering the full range of academic disciplines. The objective is to give greater visibility to the participating journals, and to the research they convey.
Journals are selected for inclusion on the JOLs using the following criteria:
- They are scholarly in content, and contain original research
- Their content is peer reviewed and quality controlled
- They are able to provide all necessary content in electronic format (tables of contents, abstracts and PDFs of full text)
- They are published, managed and developed within their respective country,
The JOLs provide information on each participating journal, including aims and scope, contact details and general information. They also provide tables of contents and abstracts (where available) for all articles published within the journals. Many full text articles are also available.
All the material is free to view, search and browse, however copyright of all content is retained by the journals or authors. Each journal will need to give permission for any use or re-use of the content that falls outside Fair Use.
The Journals Online project is not a publisher! The JOLs provide a service to the journals by hosting their content online, and actively promoting the websites to encourage discovery of the titles and their articles. Individual journals are also using the websites to publish their journals and they welcome submissions from registered users.
How do I include my journal?
If your journal is not included on a JOL and you would like to participate, see the criteria for inclusion (above), and contact the JOL directly. Each JOL has an individual email address. A list of addresses and links can be found on the Journals Online page.
If you would like to recommend new journals for inclusion, please let us know. We are always looking for more titles.
Journals Online Newsletter
The Journals Online Newsletters are published twice annually and feature information on usage including total downloads, regional downloads and most viewed articles. The newsletters are available for download on the JOLs Newsletter page.
For links and information to the current JOLs, go to the Journals Online main page.