If you're a student, you know how important it is to cite your sources when making an argument. And to do so, you turn to no other than scholarly journals, which are basically physical or digital books that collect written works from experts in different fields.
Thanks to technology, there are a wealth of well-reputed scholarly journals on the internet for our perusal. However, due to intellectual property laws, many of them charge expensive fees.
Because of this, many nonprofit organizations have begun launching free, open access journal websites for the benefit of students and the general public.
What Are Open Access Journals?
Open access journals, as the name suggests, are websites where users are able to access scholarly articles and research papers for free. They are an immensely helpful source for individuals and groups who need to search for reliable academic information but are unable to pay for it.
Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best open access journals for you to expand your knowledge on different disciplines.
1. Elsevier
With over 140 years of serving the scientific community, open access journals on Elsevier are known to be highly credible and widely cited.
Journals on Elsevier cover just about any area of science and medicine you can think of, including cardiology, anesthesiology, infectious diseases, and even soil mechanics.
The open access journals also have English translations of scientific publications from around the world, including Spain, Brazil, China, and Saudi Arabia.
To get started on Elsevier, simply navigate to its open access website, and search for journals that are marked as Gold open access. Keep in mind that journals with Green open access labels are subscription journals that you need to pay for.
2. SAGE Open
SAGE is another well-established journal publisher in academia. Its open access website promises to deliver studies that adhere to the most rigorous peer-review standards for researchers, students, and the general public.
Because of the pandemic, SAGE has also made all COVID-19-related studies free to read and download. In the social sciences, the Black Lives Matter movement has also made publications about structural racism and police violence on SAGE available for free.
Similar to Elsevier, SAGE’s open access journals on the site are marked as Gold.
3. SpringerOpen
Launched in 2010, SpringerOpen has since gained a reputation as one of the most reputable open access journals in academia. The organization invites professionals from all fields of science, technology, the humanities, and the social sciences to submit research papers to raise awareness on different issues in society.
In addition to open access journals, SpringerOpen also runs a blog where you can read about the latest interviews, insights, and analyses with researchers and editors from Springer.
If you are still not sure about what kinds of sources you are looking for, don't fret. SpringerOpen has a search engine called the Journal Suggester that will recommend suitable scholarly articles. This personalized approach makes Springer the more user-friendly selection on the list.
4. BioMed Central
BioMed Central’s (BMC) online journals have been open access since 1999. The publication is owned by Springer Nature, which also runs SpringerOpen.
Some of BMC’s most well-known publications include BMC Biology and BMC Medicine. So if you’re looking for information related to either of those fields, don’t forget to check out BMC.
BMC is also a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, a UK charity organization that promotes integrity in scholarly research. With its history and affiliations, data obtained from BMC is reputable, so you don’t have to worry about spreading false information.
5. Royal Society Open Science
As its name clearly states, the Royal Society Open Science is an open access journal published by the Royal Society in the UK, the world’s oldest and perhaps most renowned independent scientific academy.
With that reputation alone, you can be sure that the quality of its research papers is top-notch. Its editorial team is also comprised of some of the best scientists in the field. The Royal Society Open Source publishes peer-reviewed content from a wide range of disciplines, including life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer sciences.
Research papers put out by the Royal Society Open Science are also regularly covered by mainstream news outlets, including BBC and CNN.
6. JSTOR
If you are a humanities student, especially an English major, consider JSTOR your savior. JSTOR is one of the best humanities-focused publications in academia, and by popular demand, it has now made many of its scholarly journals open access.
Besides English, open access titles on JSTOR are available in Spanish, thanks to its partnership with El Colegio de Mexico and the Latin American Council of Social Sciences.
If you are a liberal arts student, get excited, because JSTOR also has a sister site called Artstor. Artstor has a collection of over 1.3 million images, videos, documents, and audio files from museums for you to download for free.
And as if that is not enough, JSTOR also has a section dedicated to Early Journal Content. This makes articles published before 1923 in the US (and before 1870 everywhere else in the world) available for free.
7. MDPI Humanities
Here’s another Humanities-focused journal for students of the liberal arts.
MDPI is a publisher of open access journals based in Basel, Switzerland. It has an extensive worldwide network of over 67,000 editors working on 297 diverse, peer-reviewed journals.
Humanities is an online publication and is released quarterly. From film studies to linguistics and literature, you can find almost any research paper on different areas in the humanities and social sciences.
Aside from its quarterly journals, the website also has regular announcements about humanities-related conferences happening all around the world. If you’d like to receive new editions of the journal every quarter, you can also sign up for email alerts on the website.
8. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
If you're still unable to find what you're looking for from the above websites, why not try the DOAJ?
Think of the DOAJ as an alternative to Google Scholar. It's essentially a search engine that allows you to look up over 15,000 open access journals on the internet. Unlike other specialized publications on this list, journals on DOAJ cover all areas, in all disciplines. Journals in different languages from around the world can also be found on the site.
The DOAJ is a 100 percent not-for-profit website, and its journal review process is supported by hundreds of passionate editorial staff, all of whom are volunteers.
Taking Advantage of Open Access Journals
Open access journals are probably the best sources of legitimate, reliable, and evidence-backed information on the internet.
The next time you’re completing an important assignment, don’t forget to browse these websites to locate the best scholarly journals to lend extra credibility to your argument.
