Open Access Journals

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Open Access Journals

The Press has a long history of experimentation, and our journals program has been at its forefront. Our open access publishing program began with the conversion of Information Technology and International Development from subscription-based to open access in 2006. Our longest-running open access journal, Computational Linguistics, followed suit in 2009.

This innovative spirit has continued with trailblazing publications like the Harvard Data Science Review, the world’s leading data science journal, and Rapid Reviews\ Infectious Diseases, our pioneering overlay journal dedicated to combating misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. And it is also why we started shift+OPEN to actively recruit traditionally published journals to transition to open access models with the MIT Press.

We are proud that all of our active journals offer some form of open access support, with 13 titles publishing as diamond or gold open access. This means our journals make it easy for authors to comply with open access publishing and science requirements from funders or institutions and ensure their scholarship reaches the widest global audience possible.

If you would like to learn more about open access journals at the MIT Press, please contact Nick Lindsay, director of journals and open access, at nlindsay (at) mit.edu.

Flexible open access models

Our open access journals publishing falls into three categories that meet the needs of individual publications and editorial partners:

  • Hybrid journals accommodate open access requests on a case-by-case basis.
  • Gold open access journals fund open access through APC fees paid by authors or institutions.
  • Diamond open access journals charge no APC fees and are often sustained by outside funding.

Explore our journals

Catalyzing open access publication

In April 2023, the editorial teams of Neuroimage and Neuroimage: Reports made international news when they resigned en masse in protest of high APC charges to start a new open science journal, Imaging Neuroscience, with the MIT Press. Embraced by the academic community, the journal signed up more than 2,000 peer reviewers and published its first six peer-reviewed research articles in July.

Similarly, in 2019 the editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics resigned to start Quantitative Science Studies (QSS) at the MIT Press. QSS articles have been downloaded over 825K times, and the journal earned an inaugural impact factor of 6.4 in 2023.

Watch the editors of QSS describe their experience transitioning to open access with the MIT Press.

shift+OPEN

To catalyze the transition of traditional journals to affordable and equitable diamond open access publishing, the MIT Press launched shift+OPEN to encourage subscription-based journals to “flip” to a diamond open access publishing model.

With generous support from Arcadia and the National Science Foundation, the program covers the expenses of transitioning a journal to open access for a three-year term and expert assistance in developing a sustainable funding model for the future.

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Accelerating discovery and
fighting misinformation

Launched in the early days of the pandemic to quickly assess COVID research, Rapid Reviews\Infectious Diseases (RR\ID) is an open-access overlay journal that accelerates peer review of preprint research to highlight promising studies and prevent misinformation.

RR\ID is now the second largest overlay journal in existence and has completed over 600 reviews. The editorial team uses artificial intelligence tools to speedily identify relevant preprints and peer reviewers. Recognized with the 2022 Association of American Publishers’ PROSE Award for Innovation in Journal Publishing, its efforts have been highlighted in mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times (contributing to debunking the Yan Paper in 2020), the Washington Post, and the Hill.

With new funding from the Gates Foundation, RR\ID will expand its coverage to consider a broader spectrum of infectious diseases and global challenges, and scale up their unique student training and mentoring model with at least 12 academic institutions in low and middle income countries.

Enabling new forms of storytelling

The Harvard Data Science Review (HDSR) is a premier research journal that publishes foundational thinking, research milestones, educational innovations, and major applications in the growing field of data science. But it is also a multimedia platform that aspires to be a global forum on “everything data science and data science for everyone.”

To accomplish this, HDSR leverages digital, audio, and visual technologies to facilitate author-reader interactions globally and learning across various media. Whether it is a podcast deep dive into sports analytics, a special issue on data and elections, or an interactive graphic that proves that John Lennon wrote “In My Life,” rigorous scholarship is presented in forms that are equally appealing and accessible to researchers and the general public.

Support open access

We are grateful to the many partners who have supported the open access mission at the MIT Press over the years.

In May 2023, we announced the establishment of the Arcadia Open Access Fund to support open access books and journals in science and technology, social sciences, arts, and humanities. This fund is made possible by an outright endowment gift of $5 million from Arcadia, who has also provided a $5 million “challenge” gift to incentivize other funders by matching their support of MIT’s open publishing activities.

Learn more about how you can support open access at the MIT Press.