Skip to Main Content
“Brandeis

Publishing Support

How OA Publishing Works

You've just finished writing an article or scholarly work and you want to make it openly available. What are the next steps?

  • Look for Open Access journals. You can search the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or the Open Access Directory (OAD). 
  • Is the journal itself Open Access?
    • One way to check is to search for the journal in SHERPA/RoMEO 
    • SHERPA/RoMEO is a great resource to see if basic journal publishing guidelines and if a journal is Gold OA and Green OA (repository). 
  • If the journal is NOT OA, does the author agreement or contract allow you to put a pre-pub manuscript onto a website or repository? 

If you are considering publishing a scholarly work and have questions, please check out the Publishing Support section of the Brandeis Library site for detailed information about the Brandeis Open Access Fund and other resources. 

Green OA vs Gold OA

In OA publishing there are variants in publishing and things differ from publisher to publisher. The various open access types are commonly described by a color system. The most common are Gold and Green.

Gold OA 

Gold OA publishing refers to scholarly works published in an open access journal and accessed through the publisher's or journals website. The publisher makes all articles available for free. In such publications, articles are licensed for sharing and reuse via creative commons licenses or similar. An example of a Gold OA publication - PLoS 

Green OA 

Self-preservation for authors is allowed under Green OA. Green OA publishing refers to the self-archiving of published or pre-publication works for free public use.  After peer review by a journal, the author posts the same content the journal will be publishing to a website controlled by the author, the research institution that funded or hosted the work, or which has been set up as a central open access repository. Authors provide access to preprints or post-prints (with publisher permission) in an institutional or disciplinary archive such as the Brandeis Institutional Repository.