This page will help you become familiar with different publishing models and whether or not you'd like to take them into consideration when selecting a journal. 

The three most common academic publishing models are:

Subscription:

The reader has to pay to read a published article either through buying the article, access through an individual subscription or access through a library subscription they're affiliated to.  

Author fees are usually nonexistent or low.  

Open Access:

Open access is a publishing model which makes an article available to anyone, even if they're not a subscriber to the journal.  There are two types of open access publishing.

• Gold:  Open access gold makes an article's finished, published version available to anyone.  The author retains copyright. This is usually achieved via author's fees that are paid by the authors, funders, or an author's institution. 
• Green:  The final published version is only available to journal subscribers or purchasers of an article.  An author may self-publish or archive the accepted version of an article, usually after an embargo period, and this version doesn't have the final formatting.  It may look like a paper written in Word.  Author fees may or may not apply.  The publisher retains copyright. 

Predatory Publishing:

Predatory publishing often look like open access publishing models but without offering quality peer-review or editing services.  

Hybrid Publishing Model:

Some journals offer the option to their authors.  Authors can choose to publish under a subscription model or an open access model. Articles published under the open access model can be identified with the open access symbol.  

Delayed Open Access

The published version is available after an embargo period.

Diamond Open Access

The article is immediately open access.  Authors don't need to pay author's fees. 

This symbol appears next to journals or articles that are open access.  

Sometimes, in hybrid models, a journal might show the closed lock to indicate an article is behind a paywall or only available to those with a subscription. 

The following links are resources related to Open Access Publishing including OA journals and repositories.