Open access journals

Open access journals refer to online publications that are entirely available to the public immediately after publication. While traditional journals collect income from subscription fees, open access journals rely on other means of funding.

 A common way to acquire funds for a journal is to charge article-specific fees (APC = article processing charge) from the authors. Such fees may range from a hundred up to thousands of euros. It is good to keep in mind, however, that most open-access journals are financing their operation in some other way than by APCs. Usually the journals are published and funded by scientific associations, universities and higher education institutions or other academic organisations.

 There are also other financing models for open-access journals. For example, the SCOAP3 consortium collects annual support payments from its member organisations. This enables open-access publishing for a number of high-quality journals on particle physics. Also the University of Jyväskylä is a member of the SCOAP3 consortium.