Open Access journals

Open Access (OA) journals, also refered to as the golden road to Open Access, aim to achieve maximum dissemination of the articles they publish so that as many scientists and scholars as possible can have access to them. By making electronically-published research results available free of charge, their visibility and accessibility is increased. This leads to higher citation rates which, in turn, increases the respective journal's impact factor and, thus, its reputation.

Contributions in OA journals are original publications. Before publication they go through a peer-review process. In addition to toll-free access for users, a further advantage of OA journals is the fact that the publication process is usually more cost-effective. Nonetheless, the tasks in the various publication stages in an OA journal cannot be performed free of charge. This means that new business models are called for. An overview of peer-reviewed OA journals can be found in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
The Web portal Journal Info provides information on all types of journal, including details of reader accessibility and cost as well as quality indicators.

Essentially, the quality of scientific and scholarly articles depends on whether their scientific content is relevant and well-founded. Two evaluation strategies which are implemented at different stages in the publication process are peer review and the determination of the impact of a publication by means of citation analysis.