How can you ensure your peer-reviewed article is published in an Open Access scholarly journal?
The best place to find OA policies for specific scholarly journals is SHERPA/RoMEO, which provides a comprehensive catalogue of individual journal policies. SHERPA/RoMEO lists over 22,000 journal titles and has developed a colour classification for OA journals, based on the publisher's archiving policies for pre-prints and post-prints (final drafts after refereeing). Publishers that permit their version-of-record/PDF to be deposited in an institutional repository without fee or embargo are also identified.
RoMEO Colour Definitions
Green
- The author can archive pre-print and post-print (final draft after refereeing).
- The author cannot archive the publisher's version / PDF.
Blue
- The author can archive post-print (final draft post-refereeing).
Yellow
- The author can archive pre-print.
- The author cannot archive post-print.
- Embargo: 12 months for Science/Technology/Medicine titles; 24 months for Humanities & Social Science titles.
White
- No archiving is formally supported.
Other RoMEO Information
- Publishers allowing use of their PDFs in repositories.
- Statistics: See the number of publishers in each category.
Examples
This table of data extracted from Web of Science shows the top five publishers for citable items by researchers at Trent University for 2009-2014, and the general OA policies from SHERPA/RoMEO for these publishers.
Publisher ** | Est. # Journal Titles | Citable # by Trent Researchers | RoMEO Colour | APC for Hybrid Gold |
---|---|---|---|---|
Elsevier | 1984 | 189 | green | US$500-$5,000 |
Wiley | 1570 | 138 | yellow | US$3,000 |
Springer Verlag | 2389 | 123 | green | US$3,000 |
Taylor & Francis | 678 | 54 | green | US$2,950 |
NRC | 34 | 42 | green | CA$3,000*** |
* Source: Data provided by Wiley Verlag VCH, from Web of Science.
** For specific policies on individual journal titles, search SHERPA/RoMEO. Excludes publishers' individual pure gold OA titles and special titles.
*** Trent University researchers receive a 50% discount on APCs for NRC journals.