Scholarly Communications and Open Access subjectId: 668673

The goals of this guide are to:

• Provide information on various academic publishing resources.
• Help users access these essential resources through the Calder Library.

This guide is intended for researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Jackson Health System. It may also be helpful to researchers at other institutions, though some resources are limited to UM/JMH users per licensing agreements.

You may navigate this guide by using the Tabs on top of each page.

There are two main models for academic publishing: traditional publishing and open access publishing. The primary difference lies in who pays the publisher and who can easily read a journal's contents.

Traditional: In this model, subscribers pay the publishers for access to the journal. Subscribers include libraries like the University of Miami Libraries, which subscribe to tens of thousands of journals for our students, faculty, and staff. Authors do not pay to publish. Many well-known, prestigious, high-impact journals use the traditional publishing model.

Open access: In this model, articles are free to read by anyone with an internet connection. Since publishers do not charge to read the articles, authors typically pay a fee to publish their articles. Articles in open access journals are sometimes read and cited more often. There are many high-impact, prestigious journals that use the open access model too.

Hybrid journals: Some journals offer a hybrid option, offering authors a choice between using the traditional subscriber-only model or making their articles free to read using the open access model.

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There are two main models for academic publishing: traditional publishing and open access publishing. The primary difference lies in who pays the publisher and who can easily read a journal's contents.

Traditional: In this model, subscribers pay the publishers for access to the journal. Subscribers include libraries like the University of Miami Libraries, which subscribe to tens of thousands of journals for our students, faculty, and staff. Authors do not pay to publish. Many well-known, prestigious, high-impact journals use the traditional publishing model.

Open access: In this model, articles are free to read by anyone with an internet connection. Since publishers do not charge to read the articles, authors typically pay a fee to publish their articles. Articles in open access journals are sometimes read and cited more often. There are many high-impact, prestigious journals that use the open access model too.

Hybrid journals: Some journals offer a hybrid option, offering authors a choice between using the traditional subscriber-only model or making their articles free to read using the open access model.

The NIH Public Access Policy in effect since 2008, requires that NIH-supported researchers submit their final peer-reviewed manuscripts to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central (PMC) digital archive of full-text biomedical and life sciences journal literature upon acceptance for publication, to be made freely available to the public.

For more information on NIH Public Access Policy compliance, see our Researchers guide

University of Miami Libraries provides open access publishing support by establishing agreements with publishers, which offer the possiblity of Article Processing Fee (APC) fuding for qualifying articles. See Open Access Funding for details

The Open Journal Finder allows University of Miami faculty, staff, and students to find journals that are part of the University of Miami Libraries' publishing agreements. The Article Processing Charges (APC) may be covered if a journal is part of the University Libraries publishing agreements and authors have met the requirements provided within this Open Access Funding Guide.

Open access journals often have high impact factors (JIF), as reported by Journal Citation Reports (JCI).

JCI’s highest reported JIF is 100% open access. The ACS’s CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians has a JIF of 232.4.

A journal’s financial model or access policies do not determine its quality.  Most scholarly journals, wether open access or traditional, are peer reviewed.

Publishing in an open access journal does not mean an article is not copyrighted. Traditional and open access journals offer the same copyright options – sometimes the author retains copyright, sometimes the copyright is retained by the publisher.  In bothe cases, articles are copyrighted.

For more information about copyright in academic environments, see Understanding Copyright

Open access articles are available to all readers, regardless of subscription or affiliation with a library or institution because there is no paywall barrier, which increases global visibility.
Open access articles are shown to be cited by a wider variety of researchers, while articles published in traditional journals have a higher overall citation rate.

Basson, I., Blanckenberg, J.P. & Prozesky, H. Do open access journal articles experience a citation advantage? Results and methodological reflections of an application of multiple measures to an analysis by WoS subject areas. Scientometrics 126, 459–484 (2021). https://doi-org.access.library.miami.edu/10.1007/s11192-020-03734-9

Huang, CK., Neylon, C., Montgomery, L. et al. Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations. Scientometrics 129, 825–845 (2024). https://doi-org.access.library.miami.edu/10.1007/s11192-023-04894-0

Publishers of open access, traditional, and hybrid journals increasingly use Creative Commons licenses for granting permission to use published works under copyright law. This guide provides a guide for choosing an appropriate licence: https://creativecommons.org/chooser/ 

The Budapest Open Access Decaration provided the first widely accepted definition of opn access publishing in 2002. It says in part:

The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment.

By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles ... or use them for any other lawful purpose

https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.

ROAD Directory of Open Access Journals
The ROAD Directory provides access to Open Access resources from around the world.

Open Access by SPARC
Provides information and resources to help authors retain rights to their work.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers.

Why Open Access?
Describes advantages of open access to researchers, educational institutions, and students.

Open Access Overview
This is an introduction to open access (OA) for those who are new to the concept

NIH Public Access Policy
Offers detailed information to researchers on how to comply with the NIH policy, which requires that the public have access to the published results of NIH-funded research.

Author's Concerns about Open Access
Discusses researchers' concerns about copyright, depositing articles in repositories, peer reviewed practices of open access journals, plagiarism, affordability, etc.

Author's Rights
Do you want to retain the right to post your article on your course website, or in your institution's digital repository? Do you want to share copies of your articles with your colleagues or students? These and other questions are heard more and more frequently on campuses. That is why SPARC has developed Author Rights, an educational initiative that informs faculty across all disciplines about their copyrights. Use the SPARC Author Addendum to effectively manage your rights as a journal article author to ensure that your article can be accessed and used as broadly as possible.

SPARC Author Addendum
A free, legal document developed by SPARC that can be attached to publishers' copyright forms and modifies publishers' agreements by allowing authors to keep key rights to their articles.

SPARC Open Access Fund Guidance
Guidance provided by SPARC for administrators, authors and publishers on creating and developing open access fund programs at research institutions. Open Access funds are reserved by institutions to cover processing fees of articles published by members of the institution in open access journals.

Public Library of Science (PLOS)
A leading open access publisher, PLoS provides data to authors, publishers, and readers on "Article-Level Metrics", which are measures for evaluating usage, reach, and research quality of published articles.

Self-Archiving
Answers to FAQs on self-archiving, the process through which authors deposit their work in institutional repositories.

Articles for Researchers
Articles at the OASIS portal present various open access topics of interest to researchers and authors including how to publish a book, citation impact, research metrics, research dissemination, author's rights, author's concerns, etc.

Briefing Papers
Information of interest to researchers and authors from the OASIS portal on open access, institutional repositories, open access impact on research, copyright, etc.

For more information on the NIH Public Access Policy, see our Researchers Guide.

Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE)
Enter keywords or an entire abstract and JANE will suggest journals by comparing your input to millions of documents in PubMed to find the matching journals.

SPI-Hub
This tool from the Vanderbilt Univesity Medical Center's Center for Knowledge Management attempts to provide authors with information on journal quality, rigor, and transparency to aid informed decision making on publishing venues.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
DOAJ works to  to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals.  Listed journals must meet the DOAJ quality and integrity standards. Look up journals by topic, easlity see Journal processing fees and copyright/reuse policies

Think, Check, Submit
The Think, Check, Submit process will help you discover what you need to know when assessing whether or not a journal is a suitable venue for your research.

Where to Publish Your Research: Identifying Potential Journals
A guide from the Duquesne University Library.

Journals Accepting Case Reports
Gotschall T, Spencer A, Hoogland MA, Cortez E, Irish E. Journals accepting case reports. ​Journal of the Medical Library Association. 2023 Oct 2;111(4):819-822. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2023.1747.
Downloadable list of journals accepting case reports and additional information at Open Science Foundation.

Scholarship@Miami
The Scholarship@Miami repository features selected research and scholarly works prepared by faculty, students, and staff at the University of Miami.

OPEN DOAR
OpenDOAR is the quality-assured, global Directory of Open Access Repositories.

Association or Research Libraries (ARL)
A nonprofit organization of research libraries that promotes and advocates for barrier-free access to research and educational information resources.

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
SPARC is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication.

BMC Molecular and Cell Biology
An open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers articles on all aspects of cellular and molecular biology. The journal considers studies on functional cell biology, molecular mechanisms of transcription and translation, biochemistry, as well as research using both the experimental and theoretical aspects of physics to study biological processes and investigations into the structure of biological macromolecules.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.

Public Library of Science (PLOS)
PLOS publishes a suite of influential journals from all areas of science and medicine that contain rigorously reported, peer-reviewed open access research articles.

PLOS Medicine
PLOS Medicine is the leading open-access medical journal, providing an influential venue for outstanding research and commentary on the major challenges to human health worldwide.

UM Miller School of Medicine Open Access Faculty Publications
View open access publications by faculty of UM's Miller School of Medicine in PubMed.

UNESCO - Open Access Portal
The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP), funded by the Governments of Colombia, Denmark, Norway, and the United States Department of State, presents a current snapshot of the status of open access (OA) to scientific information around the world. For countries that have been more successful implementing Open Access, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of Open Access development, the portal identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities.

Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
The aim of ROAR is to promote the development of open access by providing timely information about the growth and status of repositories throughout the World. Open access to research maximises research access and thereby also research impact, making research more productive and effective.

Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies (ROARMAP)
A searchable international registry charting the growth of open access mandates adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that require their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository.

NIH Public Access Policy
NIH Public Access Policy website for researchers that have received NIH funding.

Transforming Scholarly Publishing Through Open Access: A Bibliography
Written by Charles W. Bailey, Jr., this book presents over 1,100 selected English-language scholarly works useful in understanding the open access movement's efforts to provide free access to and unfettered use of scholarly literature. The bibliography primarily includes books and publishedjournal articles.

OAA Bibliography
Archived website that tracked studies on the open access advantage in research usage and impact.

Check out this UM Libraries presentation on Predatory Publishers:

Open Access, Predatory Journals, Impact Factors, Data Repositories: What Does It All Mean? (53:20)

Preparing to publish your research? Avoid predatory and disreputable publishers. Use the Think, Check, Submit checklist.

This lecture by Dr. Kelly Cobey, from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute's Centre for Journalology, is engaging and informative if you have more time to devote to the subject.