Re: open data sources for journal language?

From: Eric Lease Morgan <00000107b9c961ae-dmarc-request_at_nyob>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:41:00 -0400
To: CODE4LIB_at_LISTS.CLIR.ORG
On Jul 29, 2026, at 5:44 PM, Weston, Eleanor wrote:

>> From: Jodi Schneider
>> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2026 3:46 PM
>> Subject: open data sources for journal language?
>> 
>> I need to filter a massive list of journals by the language in which they publish (I'd accept country of publication).
>> 
>> Are there open data sources that might be useful for identifying the journal language(s) (or, failing that, the country of publication)?
>> 
>> --
>> Jodi
> 
> They are limited in scope, but a few open data sources you could use:
> 
> Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - https://doaj.org/ - limited to participating fully OA journals, but does include language(s) and country of publication in an exportable CSV
> The National Library of Medicine (NLM) catalog - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals - limited to journals with citations in PubMed, which is mostly biomedical journals published in Latin alphabet languages. Includes language(s). Exportable to XML.
> 
> --
> Nora Weston
> National Institutes of Health


I concur. The DOAJ has a pretty large and thorough directory of journals described with many characteristics. I'd start there.

I need/wanted to do the same sort of thing, but I started out with a directory created by the folks at OJS. They have a list of all sites implementing their software. I looped through their list, extracted the one's written in English, and the did my best to use OAI/PMH to harvest the content. ("Thanks, Ed!") This resulted in a cache of about .5 million articles. I then created MARC records for all of them. I am now in the process of pouring them into Koha, and from there I will search the catalog via SRU/MCP. 

Jodi, why do you need a list of journals written in English?

--
Eric Morgan <emorgan_at_nd.edu>
Received on Fri Jul 31 2026 - 08:40:30 EDT