Month: December 2016

UPDATE ON REAPPLICATIONS AND NEW APPLICATIONS

DOAJ News Service

In March 2014 DOAJ implemented much more detailed criteria for listing, which enabled DOAJ to provide granular information enabling universities, research funders and governments to check journals for compliance with Open Access policy and mandate requirements. 
 
This led to a reapplication process that was a necessary step towards ensuring that all journals in DOAJ (of which there were about 10000) met the stricter criteria. The criteria were produced as a response to the increasing demands from various stakeholders about transparency of open access journals and to retain DOAJ’s relevancy and importance for the stakeholders in open access publishing.
 
During the last 32 months DOAJ has accepted 3,700 journals, rejected 6,500 applications, monitored journals on a daily basis, removed 1,450 journals and delisted 2,850 journals for not re-applying to stay indexed. DOAJ also receives more than 300 new applications per month. 
This large number of reapplications and new applications is taking longer to process…

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What is the future of Quinoa?

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Since the United Nations General Assembly declared 2013 as the “International Year of Quinoa”, this fascinating cereal has been gaining attractiveness as a real option to help achieve food security, not to mention hitting the shelves in trendy health-conscious supermarkets the world over. But why all the hype? If you are curious and want to know more about the potential of the super food, quinoa, then you should tune in (#quinoa4future) to the international conference entitled “Quinoa for Future Food and Nutrition Security in Marginal Environments”, taking place in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, on December 6 – 8 2016. The event is organized by the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA)—a strong a proponent of this alternative crop that can be sustainably grown in marginal environments—in conjunction with FAO and Zayed University. Partners in the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR), like ICBA and FAO, are focused on…

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Agrecol initiative to liberate seeds through open-source licence

agrecol-seed Seed as a commons is vital for biodiversity and the future of farming

Since 2013, a working group made up of plant breeders, agricultural scientists and lawyers has been exploring possibilities of applying the open-source principle developed in the field of information technology to crop seed. It aims to show a way to legally protect seed as a common good. This would provide a mechanism based on common property rights that would countervail the increasing monopolisation of seed. The working group developed a licence that offers an alternative to the conventional protection of intellectual property rights. It prevents privatisation of seed and makes it possible that crop varieties can be used without variety protection or patents. The “open-source seed” (OSS) licence has now been published in a working paper in German and English that can be downloaded from the website of our Agrecol Association for AgriCulture & Ecology, an NGO…

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