Update DOAJ Membership program

["Anna-Lena Johansson" <Anna-Lena.Johansson@lub.lu.se>]

Following the recent launch for the Directory of Open Access 
Journals (DOAJ) Membership Program please allow me to clarify a 
few issues:

First of all: The DOAJ always has been a service which is freely 
accessible for everyone - member or not - this will not change!! 
It is our ambition to be able to continue developing and 
maintaining the service, which is valued a lot from user all over 
the world.

We are very grateful of the support from our current sponsors: 
The National Library of Sweden <http://www.kb.se> Axiell AB 
<http://www.axiell.se> EBSCO Information Services 
<http://www.ebsco.com> CSA <http://www.csa.com> Our sponsors 
provide important resources needed for the continuation of the 
DOAJ.

Secondly: We might not have hit the right model in the first run. 
We have received indications that the membership fees cannot be 
met by - among others - libraries and institutions from the 
developing world, where the DOAJ is especially appreciated.

Therefore we have decided to open up for en new category of 
institutions, libraries etc. who want to support the DOAJ with 
whatever contributions they might find appropriate taken their 
financial resources in consideration. This new category - DOAJ 
supporters - has been implemented on the DOAJ webpages.

Furthermore we are very grateful as well about the initial take 
up of the DOAJ Membership Program by a number of university 
libraries and library consortia. Their contributions are much 
appreciated and they will enable us to continue the operations 
and even implement some of the = ideas we continuously receive 
from the community.

We have as well received strong indications the more university 
libraries and consortia will join as members.

Hans Geleijnse, president of LIBER has made the following 
statement in support of the DOAJ Membership programme:

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The Directory of Open Access Journals is an important service for 
researchers and their libraries. Research results in various 
disciplines are available, easy accessible.

The growth of the number of peer reviewed journals and articles 
over the years and the increase of usage encourage the Open 
Access movement and stimulate also the development of new 
business models for scholarly communication.

Lund University has done a very good job by managing and 
continuously improving this directory.

As President of LIBER, the Association of European Research 
Libraries, I would like to recommend libraries to support this 
work.

Hans Geleijnse

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Finally I will repeat: DOAJ will remain to be freely available 
for everyone!

Thank you for your support.

Lars Bjornshauge
Director of Libraries
Lund University
Sweden