Examples of OA journals

Open Access journals are growing in popularity and influence. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists more than 4000 journals in a variety of fields. Other journals either have not yet been listed in DOAJ or fail to meet DOAJ's particular definitions of "open access." In addition, many other journals have an open access component.

Sample journals

UO Library subject specialists have contributed the following far-from-exhaustive list of journals. It's meant to pique your interest and demonstrate the range of high-quality OA scholarly publications.

Journal name	Subject Area	Notes
American Antiquity	History
American Historical Review	History	provides gratis access to articles
Asian Ethnology	Anthropology, Folklore, EALL	publisher: Nanzan U
Biogeosciences	Geosciences	Biogeochemistry, paleobiology, astrobiology
BMC Molecular Biology	Chemistry	Biochem/mol bio
British Medical Journal	Medicine	OA to all research articles
Chemistry Central Journal	Chemistry	All Chemistry
Contemporary Aesthetics	Art	publisher: RISD
Current Science (India)	Science General
eHumanista	Romance Languages, History	Medieval and Early Modern Literatures and Cultures
Environmental History	History	access through the History Cooperative
e-Spania	Romance Languages
Geochemical Transactions	Geosciences	Geochemistry
International Journal of Communication	Journalism & Communication	publisher: Annenberg/USC
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies	EALL, Religion	publisher: Nanzan U
Journal of Symbolic Logic	Math, Philosophy
Journal of World History	History	access through the History Cooperative
LEMIR	Romance Languages	Literatura Española Medieval y Renacimiento
Monthly Review	Sociology, etc.	prestigious Socialist magazine (not strictly speaking a journal)
Nanoscale Research Letters	Chemistry	Nanotech, Materials Science
Nanoscale Research Letters	Physics	Nanotechnology, Materials Science
New Journal of Physics	Physics	General Physics; all subdisciplines; well-established high-impact journal
Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics	Geosciences	Geophysics
Nordicom Review	Journalism & Communication
Nucleic Acids Research	Chemistry	Molecular biol; genetics; well-established high-impact journal
Oregon Historical Quarterly	History	access through the History Cooperative
PLoS One	Science General	Multi-disciplinary science, still heavily bio/medical like other PLoS titles, though
PMC Biophysics	Physics	Biophysics; very new
PMC Physics A	Physics	HEP, cosmol, gravity
PMC Physics B	Physics	Condensed, atomic, molec & optical
Review of Biblical Literature	Religion
Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge	Communications
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy	Philosophy	not quite a journal per se, since not a serial

The above list includes a selection of journals with publication policies ranging from "libre" open access for all articles to "gratis" (free, but restricted use rights) access to most articles. In some cases, e.g. PNAS, all journal articles are freely available on the web but only after an embargo period.

Hybrid journals

A growing trend is for traditional commercial journals to offer an option to authors, often labeled "author's choice," or "hybrid," where the author can purchase open access for a particular article. Other articles in the journal are typically available only in a subscription-based print edition or online for a per-article fee. For a partial list of such journals see for example

Selective List of Open Access and Paid Access Fees (UC Berkeley)
Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access (SHERPA/RoMEO)

Hybrid journals often impose usage restrictions limiting redistribution and re-use, and usually only selected articles representing a small portion of the journal are open access. Since author fees in such journals are often much higher than those in purely open-access journals, the number of articles available for open access in such venues appears to be quite limited, but often represents high-impact work.

Finding more OA journals

The great thing about open access journals is that they are free to read. No need to depend on a library to pay for a subscription. However, you still have to find the journal. Among the lists of open access journals are:

Directory of Open Access Journals (Lund University)
Open J-Gate (Informatics [India] Ltd)
Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journals (U Colorado)
SHERPA/RoMEO Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access
Open Access Journals in the Field of Education (AERA SIG)

Contact your library subject specialist to learn about more open access journals that publish in areas you're interested in.

Maintained by: JQ Johnson, jqj@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 06/15/2009