Toolbox

The recommendation service B!SON can be used to find suitable and quality-assured open access journals. Based on title, abstract and references, researchers receive a list of relevant journals. In addition, journal information such as the amount of the article fee or the type of peer review procedure is provided.

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) lists open access books from publishers with high quality standards.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists open access journals with a high quality standard. The directory allows open access journals to be filtered by discipline, type of review process, Creative Commons licence, etc. and helps authors to find a suitable journal for their manuscript.

The CORE database provides access to open access publications collected from international repositories. A search is possible both via the web interface and via a browser plug-in.

The browser plug-in Unpaywall can be used to find freely available versions of articles that are actually behind a paywall. If you reach a freely available closed-access article during your literature search, a lock with a green background appears on the right-hand side of the screen, which leads to the full text.

The SHERPA/JULIET database provides an overview of the open access requirements of research funders. It can be used to search whether publication of research results in open access is obligatory or optional, or under what conditions parallel publications should take place.

Using Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine, authors can automatically generate contract addendums to secure the right to republish their publications in the future.