Q. What is an Open Access journal?
A. An OA-journal uses a funding model that does not charge subscription fees for access. The content is freely available to all.

Q. Why should I publish in an OA journal?
A. Making publications freely available electronically increases their use and the number of times they are cited. By making your publication freely available your impact will grow. See “The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies” for more information on this. http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

Q. What about the quality of OA journals?
A. Scholarly OA journals use the same quality criteria as traditional subscription journals, i.e. external or internal peer-review.

Q. Where do I find OA journals?
A. In the Directory of Open Access Journals. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. A journal is included in the DOAJ only if submitted papers are quality controlled through an editor, editorial board and/or a peer-review system.

Q. What is the author pays model?
A. The publishing cost is paid by the author- when his/her article is accepted by a journal. The article is free to all readers. The “author-pays” model has nothing to do with the fees charged by traditional subscription journals for colour prints and/or tables.

Q. What is a hybrid journal?
A. A journal based on traditional subscription revenues with the author pays model as an option for individual articles. It is a business model for journals who want to move towards OA and still have subscription revenue to maintain costs (and profits) while testing the author pays model. In practice it means that if you pay the publisher your individual article will be freely available while other articles in the same issue can require subscription for access.

Q. Can I pay open access fees from my grant?
A. This is sometimes possible. A growing number of funding bodies recommend open access publishing.

Q. Where do I find OA and hybrid journals in my subject area?
A. In the Combined site of Directory of Open Access Journals and hybrid journal site Subject Tree