While FMRA's initial focus was on prioritizing Green open access, its scope was soon expanded to include a fuller range of OA materials as well as certain types of grey literature. This post focuses on costs associated with publishing hybrid, gold and diamond open access articles.
Hybrid open access articles were discussed in yesterday's post regarding the impact of their APCs on the ability of certain authors to pursue open access publishing. Yet many other authors may not perceive these APCs as a barrier because they are affiliated with institutions that subsidize these costs through "transformative agreements" negotiated with journal publishers. Normally, the publisher will automatically apply the terms of an agreement to your article, if you are eligible. However, if you would like to review any agreements your institution has already negotiated in order to help you decide which journals to submit a manuscript to, visit the ESAC Registry or contact your academic library for more information (see, e.g., info from the libraries at American Univ. of Beirut and Wits Univ. - click on the "transformative OA agreements" menu).
Here is an example of an article deposited in FMRA that was made open access through an agreement between certain Dutch institutions and Sage.
The APCs for gold open access articles may also be covered by transformative agreements. More generally, financially-strapped authors who wish to publish in a gold journal are potentially eligible for a waiver or discount, which hybrid journals normally do not offer. Visit individual publisher sites for specific details (see, e.g., BioMed Central/Springer, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS) or contact your academic library.
Diamond open access journals are fully open access but do not charge any fees to publish. A recent study estimated that "there are between 17,000 and 29,000 diamond journals worldwide." However, they can be difficult to identify because 1) they are not well-represented in journal indexes like the Web of Science and Scopus, and 2) only around a third of them are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). In addition, because they typically do not have stable funding sources, their long-term sustainability is often at greater risk.
The forced migration field benefits from a variety of diamond journals, many of which are listed on this table. Unfortunately, one of them - Refugee Review - ceased operations due to funding challenges. But as described in this earlier post, its issues were recently included in FMRA to ensure long-term access.
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