The Open Access Directory (OAD) is a wiki where the open access (OA) community can create and support simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. It launched on April 30, 2008.
A wiki is a natural solution for hosting, organizing, and maintaining lists. On a wiki, revised continuously by the community, a list can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about OA.
The goal is for the OA community itself to enlarge and correct the lists with little intervention from the editors or editorial board. For quality control, we limit editing privileges to registered users (Help).
As far as possible, the OAD lists will be limited to brief factual statements without narrative or opinion. One reason is that there are already outlets for narrative texts, such as Wikipedia and OASIS. Another reason is that factual lists create a much lighter load for the editors and editorial board.
Nor will OAD import or duplicate large databases maintained elsewhere, like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). We don’t want to duplicate labor, and we don’t have sophisticated database functions. But when relevant lists hosted elsewhere want to move to OAD, we will welcome them.