Open Access Publishing

“Open access,” as defined in the Budapest Open Access Initiative, means “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, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

Criteria used to select an OA journal in which to publish are essentially the same as those to vet a traditional, subscription-based journal, with the added criterion of open access. The research should understand the journal’s review process, reputation in the discipline, impact factor (or similar metric), and acceptance rate. In addition to the appropriateness of the subject content, these criteria may have bearing on your decision to submit to a particular journal.

Learn more about open access issues, including what factors to consider when selecting an open access journal to publish in.

George Mason University Libraries, in partnership with the Virginia's Academic Library Consortium (VIVA), offer support for GMU authors to publish Open Access. These agreements are listed here, Funding for OA Publishing Fees (Article Processing Charges, or APCs).