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Open Access and Scholarly Communications: Preparing to Publish

Created by Health Science Librarians

Identifying and Evaluating Publishing Options

For help with identifying and evaluating open access publications, contact the library liaison for your subject area or Scholarly Communications Officer Anne Gilliland, MSLS, JD. 
If you've found an open access journal relevant to your research and want to ensure its quality, check if the journal is included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and see if the publisher is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
Other evaluation criteria you might want to consider include the journal's profit model, peer review process, journal metrics and impact factor, and the credentials of the editorial board and previously published authors. For more information, see the positive and negative indicators described in this guide to assessing journal quality from Boston College University Libraries.

Open Access/Open Archive Publishing Options -- Journals

  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  • Highwire Press
    A publisher with some open access titles and many more that are open archive, Highwire frequently partners with independent scholarly publisher, societies, and associations. 
  • Hindawi
    Hindawi charges different fees per journal, usually ranging between $425 to $1075. Look for the Article Processing Charges link within each journal page for more information.
  • Open Library of Humanities
    "The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is a gold open access, peer-reviewed, internationally-supported, academic-led, not-for-profit, mega-journal, multi-journal and books platform for the humanities. It is funded by an international library consortium and so has no author-facing charges."
  • Public Library of Science (PLoS)

Open Access/Open Archive Publishing Options -- Monographs

  • Cambridge University Press: Open Access Monograph Publishing Service
  • Knowledge Unlatched
    "The Knowledge Unlatched model depends on many libraries from around the world sharing the payment of a single Title Fee to a publisher, in return for a book being made available on a Creative Commons licence via OAPEN and HathiTrust as a fully downloadable PDF."

UNC Scholarly Communications Office

The Scholarly Communications Officer provides guidance, policy development, and advocacy to faculty, students, and staff on the following issues:

  • Copyright and fair use

  • Authors’ rights

  • Privacy rights

  • Open access

  • Policy related to scholarly material

For more information, visit the Scholarly Communications Office webpage, or contact Scholarly Communications Officer Anne Gilliland, MSLS, JD. 

  • Last Updated: Sep 21, 2023 9:51 PM
  • URL: https://guides.lib.unc.edu/open-access-and-scholarly-communications