LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: Open Access Journals

Looking to Publish?

There are two routes to OA publication:

Gold OA means that the final version of an article is published free-of-charge for readers. However, the publisher does charge the author (or another entity) once the article has been accepted to the journal. Charges range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand depending on the type and reach of the journal. The author generally retains broad reuse rights under Gold OA

Find Gold OA Journals in the DOAJ

Green OA (or self-archiving) allows an author or institution to make certain versions of an work freely available in an institutional repository regardless of the publisher's OA practices. The publisher generally controls reuse rights, but many authors negotiate for additional rights that include the right to self-archive.

Find out publisher's default archiving rights on SHERPA/RoMEO

What is an Open Access Journal?

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) defines open access as “the free, immediate, online availability of research articles combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.”

Open access is sometimes regarded as low-quality or the outcome of self- or vanity-publishing. Though some journals engage in "predatory" practices including exorbitant submission fees and inadequate review standards, the open access movement is much larger than these predatory journals and many OA journals have rigorous standards and high impact factors.

Reliable Open Access Resources

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
A community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals, including more than 12,400 journals and 3.6 million articles from 129 countries. The DOAJ is independent, with all operational funding coming through donations.
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The directory aims to cover all open access academic journals managed according to an appropriate quality control system, with no limitations for language, geographical region, or subject. The DOAJ defines open access journals as those using a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Journals must exercise peer-review with an editor and an editorial board or editorial review carried out by at least two editors.
PLoS (Public Library of Science)
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit organization that provides free full-text access to 215,000+ peer-reviewed journals on the subjects of biology, genetics, and health and medicine.
PubMed Central
a free archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature maintained by the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM), including articles deposited by participating publishers, as well as author manuscripts submitted in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy and similar policies of other research funding agencies. Some publishers embargo (or delay release of) journal content in PMC, but most provide free access to full text articles within a year of publication.
arXiv
An automated archive and distribution server for research articles in the areas of physics, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, quantitative biology, statistics, electrical engineering, and economics.
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This resource enables scientists worldwide to share and access research before it is formally published. arXiv is maintained by the Cornell University Library with guidance from the arXiv Scientific Advisory Board, the arXiv Member Advisory Board, and numerous subject moderators.
IEEE TechRxiv
TechRxiv.org is a free repository that provides researchers across a broad range of fields the opportunity to share early results of their work ahead of formal peer review and publication. It is a collaborative multidisciplinary hub that will facilitate the open dissemination of scientific findings in electrical engineering, computer science, and related technologies.

Google Scholar

Some articles on Google Scholar may be freely available either from the publisher or through a repository. You can also connect Google Scholar to the UCA Library databases. Learn more about using Google Scholar from the Library blog posts below: