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DOAJ

This section describes how the OpenAIRE Graph integrates the metadata of the articles indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), using the DOAJ data dump. It covers where the data comes from, how it is acquired and transformed, and how the DOAJ metadata fields populate the fields of the OpenAIRE Graph data model.

Data source​

DOAJ is a community-curated directory of open access, peer-reviewed journals. Besides the journals, it indexes the metadata of their articles. The journal and article metadata are released under a CC0 waiver.

OpenAIRE collects the DOAJ articles for the data source DOAJ. These records used to be collected through the DOAJ OAI-PMH interface; since August 2026 they are collected from the data dump. The records keep the identifiers they had before, so the dump-based collection replaces the previous one record by record.

Data acquisition​

DOAJ publishes full dumps of its article metadata and of its journal metadata in JSON format, generated every month. Access to the dumps is granted by DOAJ on request. The article dump of July 2026 contained 13,301,270 articles; the journal dump contained 23,247 journals.

Every collection imports a complete dump, so the DOAJ records in the Graph reflect the dump available at collection time.

Processing workflow​

  1. Download: the article dump and the journal dump are downloaded from DOAJ.
  2. Conversion: every article becomes one XML record in Dublin Core, reproducing the record DOAJ published through OAI-PMH, with the same identifier (oai:doaj.org/article:<id>). The volume, issue and pages are written as a citation (<journal title>, Vol <volume>, Iss <issue>, Pp <first page>-<last page>), as DOAJ did in OAI-PMH. Two values that the OAI-PMH records did not carry are added: the ORCID iD of the authors, and the licence of the journal, taken from the journal dump by ISSN. The few characters that XML 1.0 does not allow are removed.
  3. Collection: the OpenAIRE aggregation system collects the resulting file for the data source DOAJ, one record per article.
  4. Transformation: the transformation rule xslt_dc2oaf_DOAJ_dump_hadoop maps each record into the OpenAIRE internal metadata format. The mapping choices described below are made at this step.
  5. Graph production: each transformed record becomes a research product, which then goes through the standard steps of the Graph production workflow (cleaning, deduplication, enrichment).

Record filtering​

No article is filtered out: every article of the dump becomes a research product.

Entity Mapping​

The table below describes how the fields of a DOAJ article populate the fields of an OpenAIRE research product. JSON paths refer to an article of the DOAJ article dump; [] marks a list.

OpenAIRE Research Product field pathDOAJ record JSON pathNotes
Research product
ididid in the form doajarticles::md5(oai:doaj.org/article:<id>), built from the local identifier, because DOAJ is not a PID authority
originalIdsidoai:doaj.org/article:<id> and the internal identifier
type(fixed value)publication: DOAJ indexes journal articles only
mainTitlebibjson.title
authorsbibjson.author[]One author per entry, in the order of the source
descriptionsbibjson.abstract
publicationDatebibjson.year, bibjson.monthThe first day of the month, or of the year when the month is missing
publisherbibjson.journal.publisher
languagebibjson.journal.language[]The first language of the journal (DOAJ gives no language for the article), cleaned by using vocabulary dnet:languages
subjectsbibjson.subject[].term, bibjson.subject[].code, bibjson.keywords[]scheme=keyword. The subject terms and codes come from the Library of Congress Classification assigned by DOAJ to the journal
sourcesbibjson.journal.title, bibjson.journal.volume, bibjson.journal.number, bibjson.start_page, bibjson.end_pageThe citation built by the conversion, e.g. IEEE Access, Vol 12, Pp 11010-11023
bestAccessRight(fixed value)OPEN, from instances.accessRight
collectedfrom(fixed value)The data source DOAJ, driver______::bee53aa31dc2cbb538c10c2b65fa5824. The same data source is set as the host of the instance
Author Mapping
authors.fullNamebibjson.author[].nameThe name as given by the source
authors.namebibjson.author[].nameDerived from the full name by the Graph, when it can be split
authors.surnamebibjson.author[].nameDerived from the full name by the Graph, when it can be split
authors.rankSequential number starting from 1
authors.pidbibjson.author[].orcid_idscheme = orcid_pending (about 6% of the articles have at least one ORCID iD)
Container Mapping
container.namebibjson.journal.title
container.issnPrintedbibjson.identifier[]The first ISSN of the article (type pissn or eissn), whether print or electronic
container.volbibjson.journal.volumeNumeric values only
container.issbibjson.journal.numberNumeric values only
container.spbibjson.start_pageOnly when both pages are present and numeric
container.epbibjson.end_pageOnly when both pages are present and numeric
Instance MappingOne instance per record
instances.type(fixed value)Article, from the dnet:publication_resource vocabulary
instances.alternateIdentifiersbibjson.identifier[]The DOI (type = doi, about 82% of the articles), with scheme = doi. DOAJ is not a PID authority for DOIs, so the DOI is an alternate identifier, not a value of instances.pids
instances.urlsbibjson.link[], idThe full-text links (type = fulltext) and the DOAJ page of the article, https://doaj.org/article/<id>
instances.accessRight(fixed value)OPEN: DOAJ indexes open access journals only
instances.licensebibjson.license[].url of the journalThe licence of the journal, taken from the journal dump by ISSN and cleaned by using vocabulary dnet:licenses (Creative Commons and public domain licences, about 95% of the articles); other licences, such as a publisher's own licence, are not mapped
instances.publicationDatebibjson.year, bibjson.monthAs publicationDate
instances.refereed(fixed value)peerReviewed by default: DOAJ indexes journals that apply peer review or editorial quality control

All the records are related to the data source with name=DOAJ and id=driver______::bee53aa31dc2cbb538c10c2b65fa5824.

Relation Mapping​

The DOAJ records do not create relations: the dump has no references and no funding information, and the affiliations of the authors have no identifiers.

Fields not mapped​

The following DOAJ fields do not populate the Graph: the affiliations of the authors (bibjson.author[].affiliation), the country of the journal (bibjson.journal.country), the content type of the full-text links (bibjson.link[].content_type), and the record dates (created_date, last_updated).