Research Guides: S.U.R.E. Resources: Subject Specific Resources

Defining Open Access

Open access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works, for both the users and the authors.

While OA is a newer form of scholarly publishing, many OA journals comply with well-established peer-review processes and maintain high publishing standards. For more information, see Peter Suber's overview of Open Access.

Source: Cornell University Library Open Access Publishing Guide

Things to Know About Open Access

Criticism of Open Access

Not all open access journals and publishers are trustworthy. Check out the following resources to learn how to evaluate open access journals:

Is It Legit? How to Evaluate Open Access Journals from Ryerson University Library & Archives
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
Who's Afraid of Peer Review? by John Bohannon in Science Magazine

Directories of Open Access Journals

American Society for Microbiology Journals
ASM journals are the most prominent publications in the field, delivering up-to-date and authoritative coverage of both basic and clinical microbiology. ASM provides free access to full-text articles 6 months after the final version is published in an issue of one of the 9 primary research journals. For the review journals, Clinical Microbiology Reviews and Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, access to full-text articles is made freely available 1 year after an issue's publication. Tables of contents, abstracts, and search features are freely available to all users.
Arxiv Open access to 1,070,908 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics - click here http://arxiv.org/new/q-bio.html to see topics covered.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Free Medical Journals The Free Medical Journals Site provides a list with links to free full text medical journals on the Internet.
HighWire Free Online Full Text Articles HighWire has been affiliated with Stanford University since 1995. This alphabetical list is limited to journals published online with the assistance of HighWire Press. There are 29 sites with free trial periods, 107 completely free sites, and 280 sites with free back issues. Please be aware that 1373 sites have pay per view - check with the Research Librarians to see if we can find the article before you decide to pay for it.
Open Science Open Science is a peer-reviewed platform, the journals of which cover a wide range of academic disciplines and serve the world's research and scholarly communities. Upon acceptance, Open Science Journals will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download.
Science Direct open access Journals in Science Direct that either contain open access articles or are completely open access journals.
Springer Open Journals SpringerOpen, includes Springer’s portfolio of 160+ peer-reviewed fully open access journals across all areas of science ranging from very specialized titles to SpringerPlus, our interdisciplinary open access journal that covers all disciplines. SpringerOpen journals and books are made freely and permanently available online immediately upon publication. They are subject to high-level peer review, author and production services ensuring quality and reliability of the work.
Write a Critical Review of a Scientific Journal Article from the University of Gelph