I'm a non-academic and I would like to submit an article for peer review and publishing. I prefer that there's zero or minimal cost, although I understand the scope of review and editing will be lower.<p>What are the best open access journals out there? Are there any that have particularly bad reputations to avoid? Thanks.
Publishing to arXiv [1][2] is your best bet in the short term.<p>- Free<p>- Lots of subject areas (not just computer sci.)<p>- People may cite your work<p>- People may offer feedback<p>You do need to get endorsed first though [4] (as another comment mentions).<p>However, if you want "proper" peer reviewed & published, you need to start looking around at conferences. They're usually easier to get something through, as they tend to expect much shorter papers.<p>There are industry led conferences (like RuhrSec [3] for Cyber Security) which might be a good route to start with.<p>But, really, there's no shortcut for getting into a "proper" journal / conference. You need to research, have funds, time and, sometimes, a bit of fame already.<p>[1] <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16832/why-upload-to-academic-preprint-sites-like-arxiv" rel="nofollow">https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16832/why-uploa...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://arxiv.org/help/support/faq#1C" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/help/support/faq#1C</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.ruhrsec.de/2019/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ruhrsec.de/2019/</a><p>[4] <a href="https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement</a>
Open access journals by definition are almost never free/minimal cost - the idea is the the author's are paying <i>more</i> of the costs associated with publication, not less. But in return, your article can be read or accessed by anyone.<p>If you want to fork over 5k, I would recommend PLOS ONE as a major, well recognized open access journal that takes the "publish anything with scientific merit" approach.<p>If you do not want to pay, Arxiv is your best bet. However, I will say that, while good papers end up on arxiv, so do lots and lots of bad ones (that's the point) and there's no concept of "peer review" there.
You need to specify your field. What's your article about?<p>Different fields do things entirely differently, and short of publishing in Nature journals are very specific to their fields.
It bothers me that HTTP + aggregators or search failed so hard in this arena. I'd prefer an "IPFS + curated journal documents" model to any of these "hubs."
Walt Crawford has done quite a bit of interesting work in this area, he's got a book out that looks at OA journals here:<p><a href="https://waltcrawford.name/goaj3.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://waltcrawford.name/goaj3.pdf</a><p>More writing here:<p><a href="https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html" rel="nofollow">https://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html</a><p>I'm not sure that's exactly helpful for what you're asking about, but it's a good read for anyone interested in this area.
If you are into AI/ML, I believe that <a href="https://distill.pub/" rel="nofollow">https://distill.pub/</a> allows you to submit papers as a non-academic.<p>Be aware that they are slightly different than other publications and have some special requirements (for example, I believe that your paper should have some interactive diagrams if possible).
For articles on open-source software, I would recommend JOSS [1]. The organization that publishes JOSS has other journals [2], but nothing in the lines of your study.<p>[1] <a href="https://joss.theoj.org/" rel="nofollow">https://joss.theoj.org/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.theoj.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theoj.org/</a>
I see plenty of unaffiliated submissions on Arxiv. Why not just post it there and distribute the url? My one suggestion would be to read the target style guide of the academic journals you'd like to be in (such as Nature). And hew as near as polished for your own paper before submitting.
If it's software you can submit to The Journal of Open Source Software <a href="https://joss.theoj.org" rel="nofollow">https://joss.theoj.org</a> which will cost you as much as making a pull request as far as I know :-)