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Open access publishing

Gold open access

Gold open access (full OA) is a journal where all articles is openly available. The journal can bre read free of charge by everyone, but some journals charge an article processing charge (APC) of the researcher for publishing OA. Diamond OA is a full OA journal free of charge, no APC:s and no subscription fees are charged.

Quality criteria for open access journals

Check the quality of the journal when selecting publishing channel for an article, if the publishing channel is previously unknown. The reliability of open access journals can be assessed in the same way as for traditional scientific publications. By doing this you can avoid so-called predatory publishers (vanity publishers). At least these should be checked:
 

  • Is the journal well-known in your field of study? Have you previously read an article in the journal?
  • Have other researchers in your field published in the journal?
  • How is the quality of previous articles in the journal?
  • Who are the members of the journal's editorial staff? Is there any-well known researcher in the editorial board? Is the journal mentioned by the editors on their own web sites?
  • How is peer review organized?
  • How is the publisher's contact information shown on the website? Is it easy to contact the journal?
  • Is there information about possible fees, for example, APC (Article Processing Charge)?
  • Does the journal have an ISSN-number? Does the articles have DOI numbers?
  • Does the journal allow self-archiving? Is there an embargo for self-archiving? Is it listed in Open policy finder?
  • Is the publisher a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), or, if it is a gold OA journal, of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)?
  • Is the journal listed in services such as DOAJ or  Publication forum (JUFO)?
  • Is the journal indexed in central databases within the field such as Web of Science or Scopus?
  • Does the journal have an impact factor?

More about evaluation of open access publishers:

Find open access journals

Find OA journals


Finnish OA journals

Monographs and open access

Open access publishing of monographs may be possible, but it is still rare compared to open access journal articles. Some publishers have an option for gold open access, but the book processing charge (BPC) is considerably higher than the APC for journal articles.

How to find OA monographs