During International Open Access Week, we are connecting you with information that supports open access publication endeavors. There are many reasons why making your publications open access can benefit your research. By contributing to your field’s body of literature through an open access publication, you are connecting other researchers and scholars with your findings quickly.
So how do you find an open access journal that is suitable for your manuscript?
One of your first considerations is related to the types of open access journals available. There are a couple of ways that open access articles are hosted: hybrid open access and full open access. Let’s consider a few examples:
Hybrid open access journals have specific articles that are available as open access, while other articles remain available through subscription. An example of a publication like this is the scientific journal, Nature, published by Springer Nature. In order to make your article open access, you would pay an article processing charge, or APC. For Nature, this APC is a considerable amount.
In a fully open access journal, all articles are available without a subscription. An example of a journal that is fully open access is the linguistics journal, Glossa, published by the Open Library of Humanities. All journals published by the Open Library of Humanities do not have APCs, and instead are supported by partnering libraries and academic societies.
If you are planning on making a submission to a journal with an APC, then checking with your academic department for APC funding is always worthwhile. Additionally, ASU Library has APC discounts for some publishers available. Open access publications are still achievable even if APCs are outside of your research budget. There are tools and strategies for finding journals with no APCs.
You can search for open access journals with the following tools:
- The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a resource for finding field-specific journals and articles. Journals listed in the DOAJ must meet certain criteria for inclusion. DOAJ lists information about APCs within search results.
- The Journal Author Name Estimator (JANE) is a matching tool that allows you to use your title, abstract or keywords to find related journals that might be a good fit for your manuscript. Search results will indicate whether a journal is open access, and whether it has an APC.
- Journal Guide is also a resource for finding journals that match your manuscript’s area of focus. You can search by paper match, or for specific journals, publishers, or subject areas. Search results provide information about a journal’s open access status.
- The Open Access Directory provides extensive resources that assist with finding open access journal titles and other information related to open access publications.
As always, when making decisions about where to publish, it’s important to have tools to assist you in evaluating journal quality. For more information about this, check out ASU Library’s guide on evaluating journal quality.
Making your articles open access contributes to a more inclusive global scholarly community and can increase the impact of your work. This Open Access Week, consider investigating what open access strategies might work for you, and make a goal to publish your next article in an open access journal.