The aim of the Directory of Open Access Journals is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short a one stop shop for users to Open Access Journals.

Definitions
Open Access Journal: We define open access journals as journals that use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. From the BOAI definition of "open access" we take the right of users to "read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles" as mandatory for a journal to be included in the directory.
Quality Control: The journal must exercise peer-review or editorial quality control to be included.
Research Journal: Journals that report primary results of research or overviews of research results to a scholarly community.
Periodical: A serial appearing or intended to appear indefinitely at regular intervals, generally more frequently than annually, each issue of which is numbered or dated consecutively and normally contains separate articles, stories, or other writings.

Selection Criteria
Coverage: Subject: all scientific and scholarly subjects are covered Types of resource: scientific and scholarly periodicals that publish research or review papers in full text. Acceptable sources: academic, government, commercial, non-profit private sources are all acceptable.
Level: the target group for included journals should be primarily researchers. Content: a substantive part of the journal should consist of research papers. All content should be available in full text.
All languages .
Access:
All content freely available.
Registration: Free user registration online is acceptable.
Open Access without delay (e.g. no embargo period).