Education

Why Open Access (OA)? open-access literature is free and available to anyone. Researchers anywhere in the world can read the scholarly output published in an open-access journal. In other words, a local teacher who does not have access to the journals subscribed to by university libraries can read the latest research findings published in an OA journal without running into a paywall.

OA Journals in Education (all of the gold OA journals listed below are peer-reviewed and online)

• AERA Open: published by the American Educational Research Association, AERA Open emphasizes rapid review and dissemination of high-quality education research. Author fee: an “introductory rate” is currently set at $200.
• Berkeley Review of Education (BRE): interdisciplinary journal edited by students from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Author fee: none
• Cogent Education: mission is to "help researchers publish their work for a global audience." Author fee: allows authors to choose how much they contribute toward OA publication costs based on their unique financial circumstances.
• Open Review of Education Research: publishes papers from a multidisciplinary perspective, accepting both quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as articles with historical or philosophical perspectives. Author fee: $850.
• RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: publishes cross-disciplinary collaborations on issues of interest to academics, policymakers, and the public at large. Author fee: none
• SAGE Open: publishes original research and review articles in all areas of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. Author fee: $395.

Hybrid journals: It should be noted that many traditional, subscription-based journals allow authors to pay an article processing fee to make an article freely available. This is known as the “hybrid model”. Below is a very selective list of high impact hybrid journals and their open access fees:

• American Educational Research Journal (SAGE): SAGE Choice fee: $1000
• American Journal of Education (University of Chicago Press): Paid Open Access fee: $2,500
• Reading Research Quarterly (Wiley): OnlineOpen fee: $3000
• Review of Research in Education (SAGE): SAGE Choice fee: $1000
• Studies in Science Education (Taylor & Francis): OpenSelect fee: $2950

Green Open Access: Authors who cannot afford to publish an article in an OA journal that charges APCs and who cannot draw on research grants or campus open access funds to help pay for an article processing charge, can take the green route by posting a final author version of their article on a campus open-access repository. Most journal publishers give authors this right; there are no author costs involved in green OA.

​Gold vs. Green: open access comes in two flavors.

• Gold Open Access means the article is available for free, immediately upon publication on the publisher’s website.
• Green Open Access, also known as self-archiving,allows authors to publish in traditional journals, then place a final author copy in an institutional or subject repository. There are no author costs involved in the green model.

How OA journals support themselves: Rather than charging readers a subscription fee, gold OA journals often use the "author-pays" model in which they charge authors an article processing charge (APC). Many authors charge these funds to their research grants. A number of institutions offer funds to help their authors pay for article processing charges. See the SPARC Campus Open Access Funds guide for more details.

Make your publications open access by using e-Pubs.  e-Pubs are freely available for download via the Internet. Copyright is not transferred to Purdue University.  e-Pubs are used for material produced at or associated with Purdue University:

• journal articles,
• technical reports,
• working papers,
• conference papers,
• workshop materials,
• dissertations, 
• similar works of a scholarly nature.

Purdue e-Pubs also hosts the electronic publications of the Purdue University Press.

Check out PURR’s short video series highlighting some of the datasets in our collections, all of which are open access. We track down some of PURR’s most prolific authors and put them in front of the camera to talk about their research and why they love to share their data. We find data nerds in all corners of campus, too – even Classics and Philosophy.