There are many thousands of open-access journals, which follow the ‘golden’ or ‘diamond’ paths.

To help you identify suitable journals and understand their business models, the following tools, guides and directories are available:

Directories

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists over 16,000 open access journal titles. Filters (by subject, type of review, licence and publisher) enable users to search the list. DOAJ has introduced an evaluation of good publication practices, such as the quality of peer review, licensing and the possibility of deposit in an open archive. It is therefore possible to select journals with the DOAJ ‘seal’, which certifies these good practices. There is also a filter to identify journals without APC or those that allow authors to retain their rights.

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) offers a similar service for open access books.

The Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, set up by the ISSN, provides a map of open access journals.

Compliance with Plan S

The Coalition-S provides a tool, the Journal Checker Tool, and a widget that can be used to check whether a journal’s business model complies with the open access requirements set out by European funders in Plan S.

Opening Criteria

HowOpenIsIt? This table, published by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), sets out six criteria for assessing the openness of journals, including copyright, right of reuse and deposit in open archives.

Journal Selection Help

Think Check Submit (TCS) provides researchers with a checklist of questions and criteria to verify whether a journal or publisher guarantees scientific quality and openness. Drawn up with the support of several organisations, including the Committee on Publication Ethics, the Directory of Open Access Journals, Open Access Publishing in European Networks and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, this list covers books as well as journals. There is also an equivalent site dedicated to conferences.

The Quality Open Access Market (QOAM) is a collaborative website that allows researchers to evaluate the quality of a journal’s editorial processes and services. This evaluation, carried out by the researchers themselves, results in a Journal Score Card, calculated on the basis of expressed opinions.

The Enago Open Access Journal Finder is a search engine that uses the DOAJ index to pre-select (or recommend) journal titles whose quality criteria correspond to the research theme indicated in the abstract of your article. This tool specifies the editorial committee, the reviewing process, publication deadlines, and the amount of APC.

Further information can be found in the Scholarly Communication Toolkit produced by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).