Open Access Publication

For me, open access journals provide two prominent, equally important advantages over subscription-only or delayed access ones.  1) Many of them grant authors the copyright of their article through Creative Commons licenses.  2) Open access journals allow any researcher, regardless of the financial status of their company or institution, immediate access to the most current knowledge.  Furthermore, while open access publication does have uncertainties and authors have expressed concerns, particularly regarding quality, a comparison of open access articles and non-open access ones in the PNAS suggests that the former are twice as likely to be cited than the latter.  Given this, and if you have not previously thought about such an approach to publication, please take a moment to consider publishing your next article in an open access journal.

(The following list will be periodically updated)

 

Directories, archives, and publishers:

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ; directory)

PubMed Central

UK PubMed Central

BioMed Central

Chemistry Central

PhysMath Central

Public Library of Science

Copernicus Publications

 

Journals:

(There are many more open access journals than the ones listed below, so please visit the DOAJ linked above.  Below are some of my favorites.)

BMC Evolutionary Biology

BMC Ecology

BMC Microbiology

BMC Biology

BMC Molecular Biology

BMC Genomics

BMC Genetics

BMC Bioinformatics

Biology Direct

Geochemical Transactions

Saline Systems

Microbial Cell Factories

PLoS One

PLoS Biology

PLoS Genetics

PLoS Computational Biology

International Microbiology

Nucleic Acids Research

Molecular Systems Biology

Biogeosciences and Biogeosciences Discussions

eEarth

Journal of Cave and Karst Studies

Mars: The International Journal of Mars Science and Exploration