The oa.finder: Support for Finding Open Access Journals

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As of 2023, the University of Zurich provides its members with the “oa.finder“. This tool assists researchers in finding suitable journals to publish their manuscripts open access. The oa.finder also shows all journals in which UZH members can publish free of charge thanks to Read-and-Publish agreements.

What’s behind it?

The oa.finder is based on data from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and has been expanded with information about our Read-and-Publish agreements (transformative agreements) with publishers. Read-and-Publish agreements allow researchers to publish articles in these journals as open access without additional costs (“publish”) and, of course, to access the content of these journals (“read”).

Originally developed for Germany, the contract data of the University of Zurich was collected in a pilot project and integrated into the oa.finder since 2023. The data collection for the University of Zurich was partially automated: half of the contracts were already registered in the ESAC Registry and the Journal Checker Tool. Information about the journals contained in these contracts could be automatically processed based on the ESAC ID per contract. For the remaining publishing contracts, lists of journals and their ISSN numbers had to be manually created.

What does the oa.finder offer?

The oa.finder not only provides the opportunity to search for suitable open-access journals in one’s own area of research but also allows searching for journals for which the UZH (University Library) has already paid publication costs. This enables UZH members to publish open access in these journals without additional costs.

A significant portion of these journals are so-called hybrid journals. Hybrid journals are subscription-based journals in which individual articles can be published as open access for a fee. Gold Open Access journals (where all articles are published open access) are also part of the contracts. Depending on the publisher, certain guidelines must be followed in the publication workflow if one were to make use of UZH’s contracts. Researchers at UZH who want to take advantage of the publishing contracts can find these guidelines on the University Library’s website.

Simplified access to Read-and-Publish agreements

The lists of journals that are part of each contract are provided in table format as downloads on the University Library’s website. As of now, this information can also be accessed via the oa.finder.

How to use the oa.finder?

To use the data in the oa.finder, “University of Zurich” must be entered as the institution first (see Figure). Afterward, searches can be conducted based on keywords, journals, keywords, and more. Additional filter options for open-access options, publishers, the amount of APCs one is willing to pay, etc., help narrow down the search.

Find out how to use the oa.finder and other tools for searching for OA journals in our tutorial. The oa.finder can also be utilized by the University Hospitals Zurich and other institutions in Switzerland, as these are listed as separate organizations in the contracts stored in the Journal Checker Tool.

Melanie Röthlisberger, Open Science Services