Open access is good for you

The introduction of open access has greatly influenced the way researchers publish their results and consult those of their colleagues. Basically two routes have been designed for open access. By using open-access repositories, the green route makes published articles and results freely available on the internet, typically after permission and an embargo period decided by the journal publisher. In most cases this archiving is done by institutions and universities. In the second so-called gold route, authors publish in an open-access journal. Two types exist here, a fully open-access journal or a hydrid journal containing conventional and open-access articles, but for both types a publication fee is charged in most cases. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), an online directory that indexes and provides access to open-access journals, currently contains about 9900 journal titles.