Open access journals

Past years have been good years for publisher's experiment for new publishing formulas. Briefly said:as a reader you may access any articles you whish through the web, but as an author, you have to pay a one time fee after the manuscript acceptance to promote this.

You may choose

1. a true OA journal where all articles are freely readable, with the problem of having to select the "right" journal from among a lot of titles. Check that the publisher is a member of the Open Access Publisher Association. This article describes how some predatory Open-Access publishers build short live site just for making money.
2. a hybrid journal, which is subscribed by individuals and libraries and contains articles sponsored by their authors to be made openly accessible as well as articles limited to subscribers. Publisher's prices, policies are given in the Romeo database.

From which credit position should those prices be paid ? To be effective, the open access model should balances services offer by publishers and prices asked for these services. Hence, publication prices should be paid on research credits, not library's.

Since we are in a transition period, and since libraries favour open access publishing, the question remains open to discussion in Fribourg.

More information on

• hybrid journals in Peter Suber's september OA Newsletter
• journals fees and policies with the For Author section of the Directory of OA Journal
• a longer list as above from SHERPA