Publishing in Open Access: what is the best option?
The list of journals for the Chemistry and Biochemistry Section is available online.
Updated on: March 4, 2025
The list of relevant journals includes titles where Chemistry and Biochemistry research groups have regularly published over the last years. Those journals are analysed for Open Access publication conditions and publication cost coverage.
A list also exists for the Biology Section and may be of interest to you.
How to publish an article in Open Access?
There are several ways to make a publication freely accessible, often illustrated as roads or paths:
- The gold road consists of publishing the results of one’s research in an Open Access (OA) journal. Access to the document is immediate and free of charge on the publisher's website. Publication costs (Article Processing Charges or APC) may be covered by the SNSF, or under certain conditions by the UNIGE Publication Fund.
- The diamond road is a sub-category of the gold road: access to articles is immediate and free on the publisher's website, and publication is also free for authors. Diamond journals have no publication nor subscription fees.
- By following the green road, authors publish in a subscription-based journal (with no publication fees) and deposit a freely accessible copy of their article in an institutional archive, such as Archive ouverte UNIGE. The Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa/Romeo) helps to determine whether a publisher imposes an embargo or restrictions on the version of an article that can be disseminated.
- The hybrid model consists of publishing an article in a subscription-based journal and paying a publication fee to make the article available in Open Access. To avoid the publisher receiving double remuneration (subscription + APC), there are agreements with some publisher that include journal subscription and Open Access publication at no extra cost.
Funding publication costs
The funding for Open Access publication costs depends on many factors, the most important of which are the journal model (gold/hybrid), whether the article is related to an SNSF project, whether it’s published in a special issue, and the total amount of the publication costs (APC).
Please note that the cost of page charge, additional material fees or color figure fees are generally not covered, only the cost of Open Access publication (APC) is.
The opposite flowchart shows the different possibilities for funding an Open Access article.
You can also use the Journal Checker Tool to find out about Open Access options of a journal and possible funding.