OA Journals
Open Access journals are journals whose content is freely available to readers; publication costs are covered through a financial model other than subscription. More and more research fields are gaining good, open access alternatives for publishing as the number of OA journals increases.
Find OA journals
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is the largest database of quality controlled OA journals. DOAJ strives to cover all subjects and all languages and now also lists conventional journals that allow for OA publishing.
Support for publication fees
Some OA journals require authors to pay a publication fee, which covers the cost of the publishing process. Several universities support OA publishing by paying a portion of the publication fee. At Lund University, there is a publishing fund that covers 50 per cent of the publication fee, provided that the journal meets certain quality standards.
Read more about publisher agreements on the Lund University Library's website
Hybrid journals
Several publishers offer authors the opportunity to publish accepted articles with immediate free availability for a fee while the article is being published in the publishing house’s subscription journals. This type of subscription journal is called a hybrid journal.
The model offers the advantage of being able to publish in your “regular” journal while being able to meet the requirements set by funders. It is, however, controversial. Science Europe, whose work includes coordinating policies for 53 major public research funders in 27 countries, states in its position paper "Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications": “the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to OAˮ. The most common objections are that the costs for publishing in hybrid journals are on average twice as high as those of established OA journals, regardless of the journal’s prestige. The freely available articles “disappear” among the large majority of articles in a journal that require a subscription to be viewed. It is unclear how publishers can deal with the transition from increasing revenues from hybrid publications to reduced subscription prices in a transparent way.
Starting an OA journal?
Editorial staff at Lund University are welcome to get support on how to start an OA journal in Open Journal Systems (OJS).
Copyright
Make sure you have the copyright for the publication.
Dubious OA publishers
Dubious publishers may occur, and it is worth considering before you publish your article with them. Read some general advice on how to assess such journal.
The University Library' webpage on how to assess dubious dubious OA journals