Skip to Main Content

Scholarly publishing

Publishing Open Access 

What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. In that sense, Open Access publishing removes significant access barriers which are related to pricing and copyright. Removing the former barrier makes the works available to people with limited ability to pay while the latter barrier, allows you to use and reuse the sources for academic purposes.

Watch the video below to understand what Open Access means.

What are the Open Access publishing options?

There are two main Open Access route options available to researchers to share their work which are related to the following factors: 

  • funder requirements, 
  • the type of research output shared, and 
  • the researcher's circumstances.

The Open Access routes are: the Gold open access, and the Green open access.

Check the tabbed box below to understand the routes and characteristics of these open Access options.

The Gold Open Access publishing option allows the research outputs to be freely available at the time of publication without delay. You can choose a journal that makes all content open by default. The routes can be:

  • Full Open Access journals, publishing only Open Access,
  • Hybrid Open Access journals, meaning subscription journals with an Open Access option,
  • A transformative or read-and-publish journal: reading and publishing articles are bundled together in a subscription,
  • Open Access book publishers and university presses.

Characteristics of Gold Open Access are:

  • the final published version of the work appears on the publisher website
  • the publication is openly available without delay
  • copyright rests with the authors
  • the work is usually under a creative commons licence  to facilitate further use
  • there is often an article processing charge (APC) or a book processing charge (BPC)

The Green Open Access is the main alternative to Gold Open Access. The green publishing routes are:

  • Institutional repositories 
  • Subject repositories and preprint servers

Characteristics of green open access are:

  • an earlier version of the publication is archived online in a repository and is openly available
  • the publication is often the author accepted manuscript (post peer-review). This version of the manuscript has been peer-reviewed, accepted by the publisher but not yet adjusted to the publication's standards.
  • publishers can demand an embargo period that delays open access (check your funder requirements for maximum embargo periods that comply with award conditions)
  • the author usually does not retain the copyright in their work by default
  • there can be barriers to reuse and restrictive license conditions
  • there are no article processing charges (APCs)

 

Are there any directories listing OA journals or publishers?

Reputable open access journals/publishers are listed on two directories.

Check the tabbed box below to find out more about these directories.

1. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) : This is a detailed index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone.

2. Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) : This is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers. All DOAB services are free of charge and all data is freely available.