The advantages of open access to your publications are:

• The immediate exposure of your research
• Unrestricted access for students
• Access to publicly financed knowledge for citizens
• Access to new knowledge for collaborators and businesses

When you are ready to submit your manuscript to a journal supporting open access, you have two options: the green or the golden way.

Green open access is through traditional journals where you have the possibility to upload a file in UC Knowledge e.g. the accepted version of the article. Many publishers and journals support green open access.

Green open access is free of charge and requires you to store and that the publisher gives you access to the accepted version of the article.

Golden open access is through publication in real open access journals. Journals where the articles can be accessed freely from the journal website. Golden open access journals often demand that the author or your project pays for the publication.

Here you can investigate the journal quality and rights:

DOAJ is an independent platform for peer reviewed open access research journals. Here you can search for titles and subjects in the journals within all specific subject areas.

Sherpa/Romeo registers publishers’ open access, self-filing and copyright policies and covers selected journals in Europe and the rest of the world.

Ulrichsweb shows in which databases the journal is indexed, e.g if the journal is part of Web of Science. You can also see if the journal allows green open access and which alternative open access journals are available

It is a good idea to thoroughly check journals you do not know. The number of research publications is growing and new journals are released almost every week.

Some of the new journals do not operate in accordance with a proper editorial principle. You call these journals ”predatory journals”.

There is not a list of which journals to avoid, but studying a journal before publication is important to avoid a situation where you have to pay to publish and did not realise this. Also, because you can trust that you will get a professional publishing and review process.

The organisation OASPA has made a guide on how to choose journals. Through three steps Think Check Submit you get some advice on how to make sure you choose a credible journal. If you are in doubt about the quality of the journal, contact VIA Library for support.