UT Journal Browser

A journal is suitable for your research when its aims, scope, and intended audience match the work that you want to publish about. When you select Search all fields, you will not only search for words in the journal’s title, but also in keywords that the journal uses to describe its aims and scope:

If you check the box to the left of the journal title, it will be saved to your marked list for future reference. Click on a journal’s title for the journal’s individual page. On that page, click on Journal Home Page on the top right to find the journal’s aims and scope, author guidelines, and possible charges (e.g., so-called Article Processing Charges (APCs) for OA publishing, or page charges that are not part of a possible discount agreement for OA publishing).

When you scroll down on the journal’s individual page, you’ll see more information that may help you decide if this is a suitable journal for your research:

APC Discount
Submitting UT authors receive a full discount on the cost of OA publishing in over 10,000 journals. APC Discount shows the requirements for receiving such a discount. For more information, see the section ‘Selecting a journal that lets you publish open access at no cost’ below.

DOAJ info
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes peer-reviewed OA journals that meet the DOAJ criteria (e.g., for peer review and licensing). For more information, see How to check if a journal is trustworthy.

Green Open Access
This information tells you how you are (not) allowed to share your article in this journal. UT authors have an extra option: the UT’s Taverne procedure for making your closed publications openly available in UT Research Information after six months.

Metrics
The University of Twente, as part of the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), signed the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). In line with this declaration, use metrics wisely (e.g., do not use the Impact Factor to inform you about the quality of publications in a journal).

If you would like to learn more about finding a suitable journal for your research, then you can also follow the Nature Masterclass Choosing the Best Journal for Your Paper (free four-hour masterclass with a certificate at the end, through the UT’s institutional membership).

Journals often charge costs (APCs) for OA publishing, but submitting UT authors can publish OA at no cost in over 10,000 journals that let submitting UT authors publish OA at a 100% discount, and in over 14,000 high-quality OA journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) that do not charge costs for OA publishing. We will explain both below.

If you already have a journal in mind and would like to know if you can publish OA in it at no cost, select Search on words in title and enter the name of the journal you wish to find.

In the UT Journal Browser, the open-access logo on the right indicates the type of journal: an orange logo (OPEN ACCESS) means that you automatically publish OA in this journal, and a blue logo (OPEN REQUEST) means that you can choose to publish OA in this journal. 

Underneath this logo, you will see discounts for UT authors. For instance, ‘100% APC discount for UT authors – with CAP’ means that the journal offers a 100% discount on the cost of OA publishing (APC: Article Processing Charge) to submitting UT authors, if they meet the criteria described below, and as long as the cap has not been reached yet (see ‘Important: make sure your article can be published open access!’ below). And ‘Probably no APC costs’ means that the last time it was checked, this journal didn’t charge costs for OA publishing, but always doublecheck before you submit your paper there.

To find out how to make use of a discount, click on the journal’s title and read the criteria underneath ‘APC Discount’. Then, click on More information on [name publisher] workflow for submission.

Important: make sure you will get the discount!
Most publishers only allow the submitting author, so the author who submits the article to the journal and corresponds with the publisher during the publication process, to receive the discount. This is why you should always use your utwente email address when you submit your article, make sure that your affiliation on the article contains ‘University of Twente’, and when asked, indicate that you do want to publish open access. Have you already left the UT but are you publishing about UT research? Then ask a UT co-author to submit your joint article with their utwente email address to get the discount. The submitting author does not have to be the first author of the paper. The submitting author is the person who submits the manuscript to the journal, whereas the first author is the person listed first in the author list. To benefit from the UT discount agreement, the submitting author must meet the affiliation requirements, regardless of their position in the author list.

Important: make sure your article can be published open access!
More and more discount agreements use a cap; a maximum number of articles that can be published OA at the full discount each year. Once that cap is reached, authors need to pay to publish OA.

Before you submit your work – especially when you submit your work to an OA journal that publishes OA by default (with the orange open-access logo) or to a hybrid journal to request OA (with the blue open-request logo) – always doublecheck if you have backup funding in case the cap is reached before your article gets accepted for publication. You may be able to get funding from your funder (e.g., NWO, EU) or from your faculty in the case of BMS. Otherwise, your research group has to pay. If it is an option for you to publish behind a paywall in a hybrid journal (with the blue open-request logo), then you can benefit from the Taverne procedure that leads to an open version of your originally closed paper in UT Research Information after six months. However, the Taverne licence does not grant additional reuse rights.

If your research funder requires you to publish OA (e.g., funders that endorse Plan S), then always use the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), even if you plan to publish in a journal with a discount agreement. If the agreement is not renewed, or the cap is reached, RRS lets you still comply with your funder’s requirements. Use the RRS when you first submit your article. That way, you can meet your funder’s requirements by making the accepted version of your article openly available in UT Research Information with a CC-BY licence, without an embargo, even if the published version ends up behind a paywall.

You can sign up for a notify-me service that will send you a maximum of two emails per publisher, about the expected and final date that a cap will be reached. If you are not sure if your article will get accepted in time to get the discount, please contact the information specialist of your faculty so you can look at your options together.

Publish Diamond Open Access
In the Journal Browser, some journals are marked with an orange OA logo and the indication “Probably no APC costs”. These may be diamond open-access journals.

Diamond OA is a scholarly publishing model in which neither authors nor readers pay fees to publish or access articles. Diamond journals are generally owned or governed by the scholarly community, rather than commercial publishers. This model aims to make scholarly communication more equitable and accessible, regardless of authors’ institutional affiliation or financial resources, while supporting open licences and community-led publishing.

Diamond OA offers an alternative to publishing models that rely on publication fees for authors. Diamond journals do not charge APCs and are therefore not subject to the publication caps of institutional agreements with publishers (as they do not rely on these agreements).

Diamond journals can be a good option for researchers funded by organisations that adhere to Plan S, such as NWO or the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme. However, always check the journal’s compliance with the applicable funder requirements. For Plan S-funded research, consult the cOAlition S website.

Always check the journal’s website to confirm its publishing model, verify that no APCs are charged, and check the applicable licence and any relevant funder requirements. The Journal Browser indicators alone do not guarantee that a journal follows the diamond model or meets all funder requirements.