Where Should I Publish My Article?
Open access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works, for both the users and the authors.
While some OA publishers require authors to pay page charges to help defray the cost of publishing, OA is not vanity publishing or self-publishing since legitimate OA publishers still submit authors to the same rigors of peer review as traditional academic publishers. For more information, see Peter Suber's overview of Open Access (http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm) and his A Field Guide to Misunderstandings about Open Access (https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4322571/suber_fieldguide.html?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)
Green OA publishing refers to the self-archiving of published or pre-publication works for free public use. Authors provide access to preprints or post-prints (with publisher permission) in an institutional or disciplinary archive such as eCommons@Cornell and arXiv.org.
Gold OA publishing refers to works published in an open access journal and accessed via the journal or publisher's website. Examples of Gold OA include PLOS (Public Library of Science) and BioMed Central.
Image: Opensource.com, http://tinyurl.com/l7y66vo
- Gratis OA is information that is available free of charge, while some copyright and licensing restrictions may still apply.
- Libre OA is information that is free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restriction.
- While 'free' implies that the information does not cost anything to access, remember that OA publishing still often involves a cost to the author to publish the work.
Funders with Public Access Mandates
With the 2013 OSTP Public Access mandate, research funded by many government agencies must now be made publicly available, with some private funders adopting similar policies. Keep in mind that publishing in an open access journal does not necessarily satisfy compliance with these policies and may not be necessary for compliance. Rather, these policies require the deposit of research publications and data in particular open repositories, regardless of the type of journal in which they have been published. If you have received federal funding for your research, review the requirements for such funding to learn what if any Open Access requirements come with your funding.
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ROARMAP: Registry of Open Access Repository Mondates and PoliciesSearchable international registry charting the growth of open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that require or request their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository
There are many discipline-specific as well as multi-disciplinary open access journals. Choose journals for publication carefully; review the other pages in this guide for more information on what to look for in a journal, or contact your librarian for help.
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Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)This is a searchable directory of open access journals across all disciplines.
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS publishes several well-established open access, peer-reviewed journals covering an array of disciplines in the sciences including PLOS Biology, PLOS One, and PLOS Pathogens.
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International Association for Media and Communication Research OA journal listThis website lists open access journals in the field of media and communications research.
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PeerJAn off-shoot of PLoS, PeerJ is a new open access journal in the biological and medical sciences. PeerJ operates under a unique publishing fee model, which includes lifetime membership options.
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Elsevier's OA JournalsElsevier publishes many journals and scholarly works in various disciplines. This site provides a list of this publisher's open access journals.
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SpringerOpenThis is a list of open access journals published by Springer covering numerous disciplines and subject areas.
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Taylor & Francis OA JournalsTaylor & Francis publishes many journals and scholarly works in various disciplines. This site provides a list of this publisher's open access journals.
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Wiley Open AccessWiley publishes many journals and scholarly works in various disciplines. This site provides a list of this publisher's open access journals.
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Open Humanities PressAn "international, scholar-led open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought available worldwide." The OHP network includes several openly accessible book series published by MPublishing at the University of Michigan, as well as a selective list of autonomously-produced open access journals in critical and cultural theory.
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Knowledge UnlatchedKnowledge Unlatched works with libraries and academic publishers to make selected books openly accessible. The model depends on libraries contributing to cover a publisher's costs on a book; when the cost-recovery goal is met, the book becomes open access. Knowledge Unlatched encourages authors to discuss this option with their publishers.
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MLA CommonsA network linking members of the Modern Language Association. "MLA Commons, in addition to supporting a wide range of informal blogs and discussion groups, offers a robust platform for more formal publications—both member-generated and those initiated by the association."
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MediaCommons PressAn "in-development feature of MediaCommons promoting the digital publication of texts in the field of media studies, ranging from article- to monograph-length.”
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Open Library of HumanitiesA high-profile initiative to establish a non-profit open access publisher for the humanities and social sciences.
Copied, with changes and permission, from the "Open Access Publishing" guide, created by the Gail Steinhart and Jeremy Cusker at Cornell University: http://guides.library.cornell.edu/openaccess/home
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