Open access

Open Access differs from traditional publishing models by embracing a financial and operational model that facilitates free, unrestricted access to research findings. Open Access journals are able to eliminate online subscription costs by front-loading costs through article processing fees to authors, and support through sponsorship, advertising, and volunteerism.

Getting started with Open Access

Tips on identifying and avoiding predatory publishers

• World Association of Medical Editors

  This WAME document aims to provide guidance to help editors, researchers, funders, academic institutions and other stakeholders distinguish predatory journals from legitimate journals.
• Scimago Journal Impact Factors

  The Scimago Journal & Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains. Journals can be compared or analyzed separately.
• Sherpa / Romeo

  SHERPA RoMEO is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of self-archiving permissions and conditions of rights given to authors on a journal-by-journal basis.
• COPE - Committee on Publication Ethics

  COPE provides advice to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics and, in particular, how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct. It also provides a forum for its members to discuss individual cases. COPE does not investigate individual cases but encourages editors to ensure that cases are investigated by the appropriate authorities (usually a research institution or employer).
• Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison
  This article in BMC Medicine provides a very thorough examination of predatory journals and an extensive set of criteria to apply in evaluating the credibility of a journal or publisher.

The UNR Med Open Access Publishing Fund exists to help defray the cost of article processing fees for authors publishing in open access journals.

Goals of this program are to facilitate publication by students and early-career investigators and broaden the impact of research generated by the UNR Med community. Published articles subsidized by this program are highlighted below:

• Jacobs NN, Esquierdo-Leal J, Smith GS, Piasecki M, Houmanfar RA. Diversifying academic medicine: One search committee at a time. Front Public Health. 2022 Aug 19;10:854450. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.854450. PMID: 36062088; PMCID: PMC9437329.
• Grainger N, Shonnard CC, Quiggle SK, Fox EB, Presley H, Daugherty R, Shonnard MC, Drumm BT, Sanders KM. Propagation of Pacemaker Activity and Peristaltic Contractions in the Mouse Renal Pelvis Rely on Ca2+-activated Cl- Channels and T-Type Ca2+ Channels. Function (Oxf). 2022 Aug 24;3(6):zqac041. doi: 10.1093/function/zqac041. PMID: 36325511; PMCID: PMC9614935.
• Adler AV, Nadone HR, Dafinone ME, Facemyer KC. Social justice in medical education: a student-led approach to addressing COVID-19 vaccine equity in the Hispanic/Latinx community. Med Educ Online. 2023 Dec;28(1):2241169. doi: 10.1080/10872981.2023.2241169. PMID: 37499134; PMCID: PMC10375929.
• Cay P, Singer CA, Ba MA. Gene network analysis for identification of microRNA biomarkers for asthma. Respir Res. 2022 Dec 26;23(1):378. doi: 10.1186/s12931-022-02304-2. PMID: 36572876; PMCID: PMC9793650.
• Firzli TR, Miah FZ, Horton C, Akhtar H, Riddle M, Siddiqui F. Influence of time from admission to norepinephrine administration and volume of fluids received on outcomes of patients meeting sepsis-3 criteria: a retrospective study using the MIMIC-IV database. Trauma Surgery Acute Care Open. 2023 Apr 13;8(1):e001024. doi: 10.1136/tsaco-2022-001024. PMID: 37073334; PMCID: PMC10106031.
• Li I, Fong R, Hagen M, Tabaac B. Medical student attitudes and perceptions of psychedelic-assisted therapies. Front Psychiatry. 2023 Jun 27;14:1190507. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1190507. PMID: 37441143; PMCID: PMC10335742.

Get help

Are you receiving unsolicited emails inviting you to submit manuscripts to questionable journals? Looking for open access journals that will be a good fit for your manuscript? If you have questions about evaluating the reputation of a journal or publisher, contact: Terry Henner, thenner@med.unr.edu.