Publishing in Discipline-Specific Open Access Journals: Opportunities and Outreach for Librarians

Open access (OA) journals promote the opportunity for peer-reviewed journal articles to be freely accessible. In recent years, the number of OA journals has exploded in all disciplines. Previous studies have identified print-based pedagogical discipline-specific journals outside the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) for librarians to consider as vehicles for publishing articles related to subject-based Information Literacy (IL). The present study explores the presence of discipline-specific pedagogical journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and presents a table of OA journals with their acceptance rates and review times. Pedagogical OA journals are highlighted as a potential opportunity for librarians to pro-actively reach out to faculty within a discipline and contribute towards the OA movement.