DOAJ lists journals that have an Open Access policy, in this link in the Computer Science field.
<p>I’ve been doing some more computer science research lately, and have been continually frustrated by the prevalence of pay-per-article research on the web. In fact, most research in Computer Science seems to be published under contractual obligations to the Journal doing the publishing with the author signing away rights to his own work.</p>
<p>What’s worse is much of this research is paid for by the Federal Government. So, I’ve paid for the research and now I have to pay again to view it. The fees to view the research range from moderate to expensive, for me, but for someone in a third world country the fees are simply prohibitive.</p>
<p>In researching <i>this</i> topic I’ve found some scholarly articles showing that Open Access research has more of an impact on the scientific community because it’s more available. As a scientist you’d want to have more of an impact rather than less, right? Well, no, apparently you’d rather be published in a more prestigious journal than anything else since that helps with tenure, and it’s those prestigious journals that are most adverse to Open Access since they have the most to lose. That is, their jetset ways, looker assistants, and arbiter-of-all-that-is-good status.</p>
<p>So, if <i>you’re</i> going to publish an article and you’re not on a tenure track (or if you are and have some valor) do it in an Open Access journal.</p>
<p>Now, beyond that, what does the Internet mean for journals? Let’s ask ourselves why journals exist. At one time there needed to be a central clearing house for research. Authors could only send off so many copies to so many people and only so many reviewers could be attached to any one journal.</p>
<p>All those barriers are gone on the Internet. Any author can afford to have n number of people download his PDF (his institution will typically pay for the bandwidth) and anybody can be a reviewer. But what of qualifications? That’s what credibility ratings are for, and they work all over the Internet from Google PageRank to Slashdot Karma. It won’t be long before there’s a website where researchers can get an RSS feed of the best new research, relevance ranked, and rated by reviewers with ranks weighted by the reviewer’s credibility.</p>
<p>Journals are a relic of the pre-Internet era - they raise the bar to publication, introduce inefficiences into the system and keep researchers from getting to papers they want to read. They can chose to evolve or be out-competed.