Compiled by Dominic Mitchell, DOAJ Operations Manager
Building on the successes of 2022, 2023 was another fantastic year for TCS, with lots of progress made on key strategic activities that the Committee had selected as a priority. On top of regular activities such as updating the 71 distinct versions of the checklists, much work on the strategic activities was also done. These included commissioning a new primer video in English and Japanese (the former will launch in 2024), a video on publishing due diligence for our library community, and a written paper on predatory publishing.
Strategy and operations
Last year was Year Two of our first operational plan, produced by Lorraine Estelle, Communications Administrator, based on activities the Committee prioritised in 2022. Of the seven activities, six were completed and the last one was started but carries over into the operational plan for 2024-2025.
The completed activities are:
- Relaunch the website with a better user experience and easier access to the tools and resources
- Refresh the primer video and translate it into several languages
- Advocate for the use and integration of our tools and resources across stakeholder groups
- Connect with our communities via webinars and presentations
- Create a guide for our library community
- Commission an article on predatory publishing
The activity that is carried over to 2024-2025 is:
- Ensure checklist translations are up to date and in as many languages as possible
(The Committee met in January 2024 to select a new range of activities and a new operational plan has been produced.)
Our vision
Our vision is for all researchers to be aware of how to avoid predatory publishing.
Our mission
Through a range of tools and practical resources, this international, cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications.
Committee
In 2023, we said goodbye to Natalie Ridgeway of COPE and a founding TCS committee member but were delighted to welcome Alysa Levene, COPE’s Operations Manager. We’re very pleased that COPE continues to play an active role in TCS.
We welcomed back Suzanne Abbott, who continues to represent the interests of ALPSP on the Committee.
We said goodbye to Mary Francis, AUP, but were pleased to welcome Wendy Queen, Director of Project MUSE, to represent AUP’s interests in her place.
Website
The new website was relaunched in May 2022 and continues to perform well with a steady increase in traffic throughout 2023. Traffic is monitored through DOAJ’s Plausible web metrics account.
Web traffic to TCS between 1st March 2022 and 19th March 2024 shows a steady increase over time
Over the two years, our top-performing pages are:
- The journals checklist 157k (visitors)
- The books and chapters checklist 17.1k
- The Japanese journals checklist 12.2k
- Our resources page about predatory publishing 10.2k
- Our resources page 8.7k
- Our About page 6.9k
- The Turkish journals checklist 5.6k
In 2022, we signed a monthly maintenance contract with Semblance, who look after the site for us. In 2023, this proved to be extremely useful as it revealed repeated outages and delayed response times. We hadn’t received an alert about this from our then site hosts. Closer investigation revealed that our database software was at the end of its life and was no longer supported. Upon advice from Semblance, we migrated to a new site host, saving us money and future-proofed the website on new modern database software.
At the same time, we migrated the TCS mailing list to a GDPR-compliant mailout service, Mailpoet, which is fully integrated with the TCS website. We cleaned up the list removing and pruning dead email addresses.
Tools and resources
In August 2023, we published a video primer for librarians on publishing due diligence, starring Katherine Stephan, our library community representative from Liverpool John Moore’s University. It has had 907 views since then.
In October 2023, we launched a completely new and updated primer video explaining what TCS is and how it can help researchers and librarians avoid predatory publishing. We’re extremely pleased with the result because it’s much more inclusive and current, taking in books and chapters and representing the important roles that librarians play in helping researchers to find good venues for their work. It has been viewed 2400 times at the time of writing this.
The journals and book and chapters checklists continue to be updated, as well as corresponding translations. After suggestions submitted by engaged community members, we slightly adjusted both checklists. There are now 22 language versions of the books and chapters checklist and 49 language versions of the journals checklist
In 2024, we will focus on bringing the non-English language versions for both checklists up to date.
Community and advocacy
We continue to gain more followers and greater exposure on social media, particularly X and Facebook. In 2023, we started a LinkedIn profile that has also gained followers, although there is more work to do there. (LinkedIn will be a focus in 2024 as part of the new operational plan.)
In 2023, we participated in the following webinars:
- A webinar hosted by Taylor & Francis for their author community.
- A webinar on predatory publishing, hosted by SLA Europe on 16 March.
- Katherine Stephan presented at a webinar hosted by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) on 9 March
- We presented to the Danish Open Access network, during OA week, on 26 October
- We did a presentation to librarians and researchers who are part of the University of Algarve community on 26 October.
In October 2023, Insights, the UKSG journal, published an article written by two representatives from DOAJ, Cenyu Shen and Leena Shah (https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.631). The article was adapted from a chapter for a Portuguese-language book on predatory publishing. As well as turning out to be one of the most downloaded articles of 2023 (it has had 3949 views to date), it was also highlighted on the TCS website as an informational resource on predatory publishing.
If you have any questions about any of the activities in this report or if you represent an organisation that would like to contribute to TCS, please contact us.