Research Guides: Open Access: How to Publish Open Access

The Davidson College library supports a variety of open access projects and encourages affiliated researchers and authors to publish open access when applicable. The library has entered into subscription licensing with publishers that allow our subscription costs to go towards open access publishing through Article Process Cost funding.

This spreadsheet includes the 2025 Open Access Journal titles available to publisher with APC waivers as a Davidson College affiliated author.

An additional tool to identify open access publishing opportunities is the Open policy finder (formerly Sherpa). This tool allows you to search by publisher or journal title. Searching by publisher using one of the publishers Davidson College has an agreement with will allow you to quickly identify journal titles eligible for open access publishing.

Link to the Open policy finder

Open Access Publishing Options

Gold Open Access - Published article is immediately freely available online for all to read, download, and share.
Green Open Access - Self-archive your work by posting a pre-print, post-print, or other version of the article online with permission from a publisher.
Diamond Open Access - Books and journals that assess no cost to the author or the reader while making the article/book immediately open.
Hybrid Open Access - This refers to the journal type. Hybrid journals are subscription based with some articles available open access.

Open Access Journals

There is a wide range of quality OA Journals available, and not all might fit your needs. There are also some less reputable, even predatory, Open Access journals you should avoid. Before submitting any manuscripts to an Open Access Journal, you should take into account a few considerations:

Open Access Journal Checklist

Recognition
Check to see if the the journal is listed on:

Directory of Open Journals (DOAJ)
UlrichsWeb: Global Serial's Directory
Open Access Scholarly Publisher's Association (OASPA) Member list is by journal publisher

Level of Open Access

Gold Open Access: all articles published in the journal are open access, authors typically pay a fee to publish
Diamond Open Access: no cost to the author or the reader while making the article immediately open.
Hybrid Open Access: only some of the articles are open access; authors typically pay a fee to make an article open access

Publishing Cost
Some journals charge an Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish Open Access. These can range from $1,500 - $3,500, or higher.

Funding Compliance
If your research is funded, check your funders Open Access Policy to see what is required

Open policy finder (formerly Sherpa) maintains a list of research funder Open Access Policies

When publishing open access, authors can often choose to license their work with a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses allow reuse (some with conditions) while protecting the authors' rights of acknowledgment, and enabling authors to retain copyright of their work.

The most commonly used Creative Commons licenses in open access publishing are:

Refer to SPARC's free Author Addendum, which modifies the publishing agreement to retain certain author rights. The Author Addendum is a legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles. The Author Addendum is a free resource developed by SPARC in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons, established non-profit organizations that offer a range of copyright options for many different creative endeavors.