Scholarly Communications

Option 1: Diamond

PROS:

• Diamond journals are 100% open access.
• There is no author processing charge to publish in a Diamond journal. 
• The published version of your article would be made freely accessible immediately upon publication. 
• Authors often retain copyright under a Creative Commons License. 

CONS:

• Few MEDLINE-indexed journals currently publish under this model. 
• Diamond journals are by nature non-commercial (owned by universities and non-profit organizations,) are often international, and may be more restrictive in the types of submissions they accept or how often they publish. Check the journal's homepage for "information for authors."
• Evaluate the journal for quality and discoverability (where is the journal indexed?) Diamond journals are less frequently indexed for go-to databases like Pubmed, Scopus and Web of Science.  
• "Diamond" does not denote editorial quality. 

 FOR EXAMPLE:

• Journal of Anaesthesiology Clinical Pharmacology, Published by the Research Society of Anaesthesiology Clinical Pharmacology 
• Emerging Infectious Diseases, Published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Find Diamond journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) by clicking no-APC journals and then searching by keyword or filtering for your field, or contact your librarian to request a search of 100% open, no-fee journals for your topic. 

Option 2: Gold

PROS:

• Gold journals are 100% open access.
• The published version of your article is made freely accessible immediately upon publication. 
• Authors retain copyright under a Creative Commons License. 
• A common open access model. 

CONS:

• Requires the author to pay a fee upon acceptance.
• "Author processing charges" range widely by journal, from 300 up to 15,000 USD.  
• Evaluate the journal for quality and discoverability (where is the journal indexed?) 
• "Gold" does not denote editorial quality. 

 FOR EXAMPLE:

• PLOS One
• BMC Primary Care

Find Gold journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The Directory of Open Access Journals only includes journals that have met quality standards and offers information about author fees, aims and scope, indexing, and author rights for each journal. Or, contact your librarian to request a search of open access journals for your topic. 

Option 3: Hybrid

Hybrid journals offer authors the option to make their article openly accessible, for a fee. 

PROS:

• Published version of the article is made freely accessible immediately upon publication. 
• Good option if you would like your work to be freely accessible, but your journal of interest in not 100% open access. Reasons to publish in subscription journals could be due to scope, name recognition, indexing status, impact factor, etc. 
• Most subscription journals now offer this option. 

CONS:

• Selecting the option to publish open when submitting to a subscription journal will require the author to pay an author processing charge upon acceptance. Author processing fees may range from 300 to 15,000 USD. 
• Author rights vary by journal. 
• Librarians and institutions have expressed concern that this model "double dips" i.e. publishers concurrently charge subscription and publishing fees.  You can read more about transformative agreements, read-and-publish, and publish-and-read deals here. 

FOR EXAMPLE:

• The Lancet
• Nature is an example of a self-proclaimed "transformative" journal, where the journal's stated goal is to eventually "flip" to 100% open access.

Look for information about author rights, and open access options and costs on the journal's homepage. You can also find information about "transformative journals" from the big publishers Springer, Elsevier, and others on their websites. 

Option 4: Green

An unpublished version of the published article may be made available in a public access respository such as PubMed Central or Touro Scholar. 

NOTE: Only peer-reviewed works accepted to a journal may be deposited in Touro Scholar and PubMed Central. 

PROS:

• No author fees required.
• Depositing the author manuscript in a PubMed Central fulfills current NIH funding mandates for public access. 
• Deposit in a repository increases the discoverability of a work, whether or not it was originally published open access. Research has indicated that use of institution and disciple respositories increases citation count. 

CONS:

• Not traditionally considered a "true" open access publication, as the published version may be closed. 
• Permissions vary by journal. 
• Author rights vary by journal. 
• Journals may impose a delay of up to one year before the article version can be made available in a repository. 
• Deposit may not be automatic by the publisher (author must deposit). 

FOR EXAMPLE:

• This article was published in the subscription journal, The New England Journal of Medicine. 

Due to a funding requirement, the author manuscript is was made publicly available in PubMed Central. From PubMed, the published, formatted version is avilable via the New England Journal of Medicine link, while the author manuscript is freely accessible via the PMC link.

Find open access, copyright, and archiving permissions by journal in SHERPA ROMEO, or on the journal's homepage. NYMC librarians are available to assist you.