Research Guides: Open Access Research: Create It: Publish or Deposit Your Work

Open Up Your Work

You can make your work open by either publishing in an OA journal or depositing a version of a published article in an open repository.

In either case, a Creative Commons license will be applied to your work, either based on the journal's policies (for example, PLOS uses the CC BY license), or based on your choice. Learn more about these licenses below.

Creative Commons License Engine
Choose the features you want (reuse, attribution, etc.) and the engine will create your license!

Where to Publish: OA Journals

If your goal is to publish an article open access, you can do so in journals that either publish entirely OA (gold OA), or in journals that publish both paywall and open articles (hybrid OA). Both types of journal operate the same way traditional paywalled journals do, including rigorous peer review and editorial practices.

These tools with help you verify the credibility and publication practices of the open access journals in which you're interested.

Journal and Publisher Impact and Information

HowOpenIsIt?
A guide that shows the spectrum of qualities that make a journal open, including reader rights and copyrights, created by PLOS, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).

Cabells Journalytics This link opens in a new window
The Cabells Journalytics journal directory provides information about journals currently published in the fields of accounting, computer science, economics & finance, management, and marketing to help those looking to publish their work figure out where and how to do so. The Cabells Journalytics record for each journal includes contact information, citation and altmetric data, and information on the journal's submission process and peer review practices.
Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a directory of journals that publish articles open access (available to read without a subscription), and a database of the articles published in those journals. Journal publishers must be members of the DOAJ in order to be listed, which ensures that the journals in the DOAJ follow ethical publishing practices. Subjects covered in the DOAJ include science, technology, medicine, social science and the humanities.
Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
The Journal Citation Reports database uses citation data to analyze thousands of science, engineering, and social science journals to help scientists and scholars find publishers in their area of research, and to to help identify research trends.

Open Access Publishers' Code of Conduct

Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association Code of Conduct
Members of OASPA (https://oaspa.org/membership/members/)must abide by the Code of Conduct which guides the publishers' ethical interactions with authors.

Credibility Assessment Tools

"Think. Check. Submit." Journal Credibility Checker
"Think. Check. Submit." is a a cross-industry initiative led by representatives from several international open access publishing organizations and provides authors with a means of checking the credibility of journals to help them decide where to publish and avoid predatory publishers.
Be iNFORMEd: Checklist (Duke)
A checklist from the Duke University Medical Center Library and Archives to help authors identify predatory practices in publishers when deciding where to publish.

Avoiding Predatory Journals

You may get an email from a journal claiming to be legitimate, with known names on its masthead, offering you the chance to publish your work with them for a small fee. If it feels fishy, investigate further! Once your work is published anywhere, even in an illegitimate journal, other publishers will not want to accept your article.

The resources listed above will help, but you should also consider doing a lateral search: open another tab and Google the publisher. If nothing comes up other than their own website, that's a red flag.

More Info about Predatory Publishers

Understanding Predatory Publishers (M. O'Donnell, Iowa State University)
A great research guide by Megan O’Donnell of Iowa State University. Defines what it means to be a predatory publisher and how to identify them.
Retraction Watch
A blog that has tracked and reported on retractions in academic publishing since 2010, run by two science journalists and their growing staff.

Where to Deposit: OA Repositories

To find a good repository for your work, search by subject or other requirements in the directories below.

General Directories

Open Directory of OA Repositories (OpenDOAR)
Search for repositories by subject, content, repository type, country, language, or software.
Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
ROAR sorts repositories by repository type, country, year founded, institutional association, and software, making it a useful resource not just as a list of repositories but as a way to study trends in repositories overall.
Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data)
Re3Data indexes more than 2000 research data repositories from around the world.

STEM Repositories

Dryad
"Dryad is a nonprofit repository for data underlying the international scientific and medical literature."
OSF Preprints Platform and Repository Search
The Open Science Framework (OSF) from the Center for Open Science serves as a research platform for researchers and also collects the works uploaded to preprint servers including arXiv and the many repositories modeled after it, such as bioRxiv, EarthArXiv, and others.