Open source journals for WASH articles

Q: I would like to publish my article in such a way that it can be shared by as many people as possible. Somebody pointed me to open source journals, however I am also keen to publish my article in a peer reviewed journal without losing the right to also share it myself. Could you advise me? (Senior programme officer IRC, The Netherlands)

Answer: There are two roads to follow, while still being able to publish it on your own web site: the “green road” and the “golden road”.

The Golden Road: make use of open access journals, such as:

• American Journal of Agricultural and Biological Science;
• BMC Public Health;
• Bulletin of the World Health Organization;
• Drinking Water Engineering and Science (DWES)
• Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source;
• Indian Journal of Community Medicine;
• Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine;
• International Journal of Health Geographics;
• International Journal for Equity in Health;
• Journal of Applied Sciences;
• Water Alternatives;
• Water SA

The Green Road: options in peer-reviewed journals to keep your rights to publish

• Open Access self-archiving – deposit your digital document in a publicly accessible website. The author holds the copyright for the pre-refereeing preprint, so that the document can be self-archived without seeking anyone else’s permission.
• Green publishers – allow archiving pre-prints & post-prints (e.g. Elsevier)
• Blue publishers – allow archiving of post-prints but not pre-prints
• Yellow publishers – allow archiving of pre-prints but not post-prints
• White publishers – no archiving allowed (e.g. IWA)

[Source: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/ ]

Note for the reader: If you have used one or more of the options mentioned, please leave your comment. We would love to hear about your experiences!