Open Access Publishing

Choose an OA publisher for your research

• OA publishing may incur costs for the author in the form of article processing charges and authors should be aware of predatory publishing practices.
• The following checklists and resources may help evaluate OA publishers and identify recognized OA platforms that meet best practice in OA publishing.

Think. Check. Submit.  Provides a range of tools and resources to help authors identify trusted journals and publishers. The service has been produced with the support of a coalition of scholarly and research organizations.

• Think Check Submit - journals
• Think Check Submit – books and chapters

Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), a membership organization established to represent and promote Open Access publishing globally, and in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines. 

• OASPA publish a list of members that follows best practice and have undergone an application review process and adhere to OASPA's Code of Conduct.

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics): an organization that upholds ethical practices in publishing.

• Check if a publisher (and specific journal) is a member of COPE

Choose a repository for your research

• A repository or platform should  preserve your work long-term and make it discoverable to users. It should not profit from associated advertising and add-ons, and should include a process of selection and moderation, in lieu of a peer-review process.
• Registry of repositories
  • Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR): hosts repositories that provide free, open access to academic outputs and resources, and which must meet OpenDOAR's criteria for inclusion. Each entry is reviewed by the JISC editorial team (UK).
• Subject repositories
  • arXiv® a curated research-sharing platform, maintained by Cornell, offers researchers a range of services, and in addition to content curation and preservation, includes article submission guidelines, retrieval, search and discovery, web distribution for human readers, and API access for machines. The platform supports the sciences, including mathematics and computer science.
  • Submitted material is not peer-reviewed, and there are no costs for article submission, but submissions are subject to a review process that checks for scholarly value and relevancy (see Submission Guidelines),

• Institutional repositories

  • MBZUAI institutional repository will host faculty research output. Find more information on the MBZUAI Digital Library Guide

Choose a repository for your data and code

• The Open data movement calls for data that can be freely shared and used, and promotes greater accountability and transparency in research practice and communication
  • Academic journals and funding bodies may require authors to share the datasets associated with their research findings.
• Datasets are a recognized research output and can increase a researcher's visibility and impact.
• Registry of data repositories
  • Register of Research Data Repositories (re3data):offers facilities and governance that meet specific standards, for example ISO 27001, Core Trust Seal or TRAC (pdf).
  • Find more information on managing your data on the Data Management Guide
• Source code repositories
  • GitHub: A distributed version control system for the collaborative development of software. Public repositories are free and unlimited. Various pricing plans are available for private repositories.