Publish your research Open Access - for you, me and everyone!

Thinking of turning that MA thesis into an article, putting together an edited volume from a workshop or finally writing that big book on discourse particles that is going to solve everything? Why not consider Open Access (OA) publishing instead of the traditional publishing houses and journals? With OA, people have an easier time actually reading your work, and you won't be feeding money into a potentially shady system that exploits academics as editors and reviewers for free, and then makes the same community pay to read the products. Furthermore, by selecting OA options that have a good reputation, you're not in danger of the standing of your work lowered.

There are several traditional publishing venues who exploit the benevolence of the academic community by not paying reviewers and/or editors, not paying authors and then expecting university libraries to pay expensive rates when buying the published research - research that tax payers somewhere probably has already funded. 

Universities like Harvard are already actively encouraging their researchers to choose OAthe Max Planck Society in Germany is also a enthusiastic supporter and co-founder of the OA-movement and CERN are either publishing their research themselves (they already have a rigorous review process in-house) or at other OA-venues. After all, why would these research institutions like to pay for things several times? They're often already providing the reviewing and editing themselves, so why mix in a middle man who charges you money for honestly not much added value?

It can be hard for a junior researcher to take the step to publishing OA, the ranking of a certain OA-journal might not be good enough yet, no-one might have heard of or trust the venue. That's why it's important to have a set of trusted high quality venues where already more senior and established researchers are publishing and where you can too!  We've compiled a helpful list of venues where you can publish your work. Go here to see it! If you want to know more about different kinds of OA (Gold, Platinum, Green, Blue etc), click here.

And before you ask, OA does not mean a lack of reviewers, editors, proof-readers etc. There are other funding schemes that can provide pay for such work, or sometimes academics provide it for free.

Finally, it may be that you're at a financially stable institutions with a library that can afford to pay these fees, but do consider the fact that not everyone else is in such a privileged position.

Thank you for your time, go OA!

P.S. Naturally there are non-evil publishing places that are non-OA.

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