The world of OA scholarly journal publishing is in flux and requires patience to navigate.
Currently, there are:
- over 10,000 journal titles listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and
- over 22,000 journal titles in SHERPA-RoMEO.
Legitimate OA scholarly journals are subject to the same peer-review and editing processes as non-OA scholarly journals.
The model of open access controls both the public's ability to access published articles, and the author's rights to the article once it's accepted for publication.
Gold OA
Gold OA provides immediate public access to articles through a journal.
Full Gold (Pure Gold)
- All content in the journal is immediately and freely available to readers from the publisher's website.
- Two sub-types are:
- Established OA publishers, some of which have an Article Processing Charge (APC).This includes publishers like:
- BioMed Central - average APC of US$1,300
- PLoS (megajournal) - average APC of US$2,097.
- Transitional subscription publishers who have transitioned a select number of journals to OA, or have acquired full OA publishers.
- Wiley and Springer are examples, with an average APC of US$2,097.
- Established OA publishers, some of which have an Article Processing Charge (APC).This includes publishers like:
Hybrid (Paid) Gold
- A subscription journal where an author pays an APC to make a specific article freely available.
- Sometimes the journal editor may choose an article to be made freely available.
- Other articles in the journal are available only through subscription or pay-per-view.
- The average APC is US$2,727.
- A list of options and prices is available from SHERPA-RoMEO.
Green OA
An author usually self-archives research output online (e.g. through an institutional repository).
Some journals permit authors to also deposit a version of an article from their journal in an institutional repository, but some retain the rights and do not permit this.
Delayed OA
This is usually a subscription journal where access to content is delayed by a fixed embargo period, after which it is freely available.
- Many high impact journals fall into this category.
Next: Predatory Journals