Discounts on Author Fees for University of California Authors

Many fully open access journals, as well as all hybrid open access journals, charge a fee to authors for the publication of their accepted papers.  In some cases, institutions that pay a membership fee, or that have subscriptions to the non-open access content of the journals, get discounts on the author fees for their faculty members.  The California Digital Library maintains a list of publishers that grant such discounts to UC authors, and shows the discount available from each:

Reshaping Scholarly Communications: Submit Your Work to Open Access Journals

Request Form for SCP Cataloging Records for Open Access Journals

To recommend  an open access journal for inclusion in the UC Library Search catalog, complete this online form.  If you need assistance completing the form, contact the relevant subject librarian.

Open Access Policies by Publisher or by Journal Title

If you have a specific publisher or journal whose open access polices you wish to see, a quick and fairly comprehensive source may be found at:

SHERPA/RoMEO

RoMEO is a collaborative project, housed at the University of Nottingham (UK) to collect information on journal publishers’ open access policies.

Fully Open Access Journals

Journals in this category publish exclusively open access articles.  Publishers providing fully open access journals are too numerous to list.  However, the sources below are useful for finding open access journals by title, publisher, subject area, or in the case of Bioline International, by countries of the developing world:

Directory of Open Access Journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a very comprehensive list of journals that publish only open access content. Note, however, that publishers must submit information on their journals to DOAJ, so it is not absolutely complete. DOAJ records include the publisher, language of publication, start date and whether or not there is a publication fee for authors, with a link to the journal’s instructions for authors where available.  Some journals have allowed DOAJ to directly display the journal’s table of contents information as well.

Digital Commons Network Database

The Digital Commons Network brings together scholarship from hundreds of universities and colleges, providing open access to peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work. This constantly growing body of publications is curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, and represents thousands of disciplines and subject areas.

Journals Using Open Journal Systems

JURN

JURN is a unique search engine dedicated to indexing free "open access" e-journals in the arts and humanities, along with other relevant arts and scholarly publications offering free content.

Online Journals Published with Digital Commons

UlrichsWeb  (UCSB access only)

This global serials directory indicates whether or not a journal is full open access.  You may search the Key Feature field in the Advanced Search for “open access,” or search by title, publisher, etc., and then “Narrow Results” to open access journals by clicking the check box for “Open Access” in the “Key Features” area to the left of the results list.

Delayed Open Access Journals

Journals in this category require subscriptions for access to the most recent issues, but allow open access after an embargo period.  The embargo period varies by journal, and may be as little as six months or as much as 15 years.  There is no comprehensive list of delayed open access journals, but the following lists may be helpful:

Elsevier Delayed Access Journals

Elsevier hosts a small number of delayed open access journals.  Currently all open their content to non-subscribers 12 months after initial publication.

Highwire Press Free Content

Highwire Press, operated by Stanford University, publishes a large number of journals for scholarly societies.  The page above lists the journals with free content, and specifies  the period for each journal after which back issues become open access.

Hybrid Open Access Journals

Under the hybrid model, subscription journals offer authors the option to pay a fee (an APC) to make their article open access, while the journal remains a subscription-access journal. Thus, publishers are collecting fees twice (“double-dipping”), once through library subscriptions and then again from author-paid APCs. The hybrid model, therefore, inhibits the incentives for publishers to transition to a sustainable open access publishing model. 

Dubious Open Access Publishers

Unfortunately, open access publishing, like all publishing, has its share of shady practitioners - publishers who seek to make a fast buck or are operating glorified "vanity press" sites with no real dedication to scholarship.  The following are characteristics of quality open access journals.