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About Gold Open Access

"Gold" open access journals are journals that follow the typical processes of publication such as peer-review and typesetting, but publish their articles freely on the internet with no embargo period, making the material available to everyone at the time of publication. These journals may be pure OA journals that only publish open access content, or they may be "hybrid" journals, which publish most of their content behind traditional paywalls, but allow certain articles to be publicly available.

In most cases, authors are charged a fee to publish Gold open access known as APCs (Article Processing Charges). While the majority of OA journals do not charge researchers, many high-impact hybrid journals can charge thousands of dollars in APCs.

About Diamond or Platinum Open Access

Diamond Open Access refers to journals that are free for readers to access and free for authors to publish in.

Unlike the Gold, Diamond journals don’t require any article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors or subscription fees paid by libraries to fund the costs of publishing.

Diamond journals leverage their research community and volunteers, and are usually funded by universities, governments, societies, or associations to make the research they publish freely available online.

Predatory Publishing

Predatory publishing is an exploitative practice that uses the promise of fast, open access publication to extract money from authors and researchers. Often, predatory journals will charge high fees to publish in their journal, but provide little to no peer review, editing, or oversight of the content. In practice, this means they take money from (usually) well-meaning researchers but do not provide any of the services that a publisher is supposed to provide. This means that good research can languish in poor quality journals with little research impact, and that bad research can be easily published due to the lack of peer review or editing.

Open Access Journal Quality Indicators

Most open-access journals are reputable and of high quality, but predatory publishers often use the term "open access" when describing themselves, making it difficult for researchers to evaluate the journals they may want to publish in. Some indicators to look out for when evaluating OA journals include:

Positive Indicators

  • Scope of the journal is well-defined and clearly stated
  • Journal’s primary audience is researchers/practitioners
  • Editor, editorial board are recognized experts in the field
  • Journal is affiliated with or sponsored by an established scholarly society or academic institution
  • Articles are within the scope of the journal and meet the standards of the discipline
  • Any fees or charges for publishing in the journal are easily found on the journal website and clearly explained
  • Articles have DOIs (Digital Object Identifier, e.g., doi:10.1111/j.1742-9544.2011.00054.x)
  • Journal clearly indicates rights for use and re-use of content at article level (e.g., Creative Commons CC BY license)
  • Journal has an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number, e.g., 1234-5678)
  • Publisher is a member of Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
  • Journal is registered in Ulrichsweb.com, Global Serials Directory
  • Journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Journal is included in subject databases and/or indexes

Negative Indicators

  • Journal website is difficult to locate or identify
  • Publisher “About” information is absent on the journal’s website
  • Publisher direct marketing (i.e., spamming) or other advertising is obtrusive
  • Instructions to authors information is not available
  • Information on peer review and copyright is absent or unclear on the journal website
  • Journal scope statement is absent or extremely vague
  • No information is provided about the publisher, or the information provided does not clearly indicate a relationship to a mission to disseminate research content
  • Repeat lead authors in same issue
  • Publisher has a negative reputation (e.g., documented examples in Chronicle of Higher Education, listservs, etc.)

Adapted from the Grand Valley State Libraries Open Access Journal Quality Indicators, released under a CC-BY-NC license. 

Finding an OA Journal

It's important to select an open access publication that is the right fit for you both academically and financially. We recommend the use of these tools to locate an open access publisher for your works.

Benefits of Publishing OA

Publishing open access has many benefits for the researcher, including:

  • Greater citation rates than non-OA articles
  • Greater media coverage of research
  • The ability to retain your author rights and control the reuse of your research
  • Compliance with funder OA requirements