Open Access Journals for Herpetological Research 4

Open access (OA) is increasingly demanded by funders, and of course is desired by researchers and readers alike. Yet some journals charge incredibly high fees for you to publish your research open access. This has led to a lot of researchers being resigned to either publish behind a paywall, or pay the huge fees.

It has come to my attention that many herpetologists are not aware that there are fantastic journals out there where you can publish open access completely for free, as well as a host of journals where you can publish your work for a somewhat reasonable price.

So, I have compiled this list of journals that publish herpetological work, divided into three categories: (1) Free OA Journals, where you can publish OA completely free of charge; (2) ‘Affordable’ OA Journals, where you can publish OA free if you are a relevant society member, or for less than €200; and (3) Expensive OA Journals, where OA is, in my opinion, excessively expensive.

I originally did not intend to include impact factors (IFs) here because I hate them, but I think it may be helpful for some graduate students to know them in order to be able to guide their decisions on where to publish in a way that is career-sensible. I am giving the Web of Science 2021 Journal IF.

A list of abbreviations is given at the end of this page.

This list will be periodically updated. Please get in touch if you think a journal is missing, or has been misrepresented on the list, but be aware that this list is based on my opinion, and is therefore explicitly subjective.

Completely Free OA Journals

These are journals where it is completely free to publish open access (at least usually). Some of these journals are not global in scope, but they are still worth mentioning.

Zoosystematics and Evolution – IF: 1.647

Systematics and evolutionary research on all organisms. Many new species of herps have been described in this journal. I understand they now have a relatively high level of demand, so they are slower to process articles than they used to be. The journal is beautifully formatted, and at least one author still receives a reprint of the volume when it is published.

Completely open access. Up to 10 published pages (16 for first or submitting authors from developing countries) published free until they fill their quota of 300 pages of articles per year. Authors can defer to the following year if they don’t want to pay the (very modest) APC that arises after this number. Details here.

Vertebrate Zoology – IF: 1.879

Articles on basically any aspect of vertebrate zoology. Many new species of herps have been described in this journal, especially longer papers because the publication is free of charge. The journal is beautifully formatted, and I think at least one author still receives a reprint of the volume when it is published.

Completely open access. No article processing charges, ever. Details here.

Evolutionary Systematics – IF not indexed

Systematics and evolutionary research on all organisms. Many new species of herps have been described in this journal. The journal is beautifully formatted.

Completely open access. 200 pages of articles per year are free of charge. Once those are used up, there is an undisclosed fee for publication, or authors can defer publication to the following year. Details here.

Herpetological Conservation and Biology – IF 0.595

Dedicated herpetological journal, publishing on the ecology, natural history, management, and conservation biology of amphibians and reptiles. This is a really excellent initiative, and is clearly successful. My only reservation about this journal is that they require two spaces after fullstops, to which I am strongly opposed.

Completely open access. No article processing charges, ever. Details here.

Journal of North American Herpetology – IF not indexed

Dedicated herpetological journal, publishing on any topic related to herpetology in North America.

Completely open access, apparently no article processing charges. Details here.

Caribbean Herpetology – IF not indexed

Dedicated herpetological journal, publishing on any topic related to herpetology in the Caribbean.

Completely open access. No article processing charges, ever. Details here.

European Journal of Taxonomy – IF 1.372

Dedicated taxonomic journal, publishing on all metazoans. Many new herp species have been described in this journal. The formatting leaves a lot to be desired, but hey, it’s free.

Completely open access. No article processing charges, ever. Details here.

‘Affordable’ OA Journals

These are journals that are entirely or partly open access, where the cost of publication and/or open access fee is less than €200, or a societal membership can make it under €200. This cutoff is set arbitrarily, based on the maximum amount that I would ever consider paying out of pocket for a paper to be OA.

Salamandra, IF 1.765 – Completely open access. Free to publish if one or two authors is a member of the DGHT (depending on the number of authors), up to 20 pages. €35 per published page for non-members, at a minimum of €140. Details here.

Journal of Herpetology, IF 1.43 – Free to publish if an author is a member of the SSAR, otherwise $100 per printed page. Open access fee is just $150 (cannot be waived).

Herpetology Notes, IF not indexed – Completely open access. APC is €50 for the first five pages plus €5 for each additional page plus €10 for each table exceeding 25 rows and/or 5 columns. Members of SEH reduced to €40 for the first five pages. Details here.

The Herpetological Journal, IF 1.194 – Seemingly free open access if an author is a member of the BHS, and £97 for non-members.

Russian Journal of Herpetology, IF 0.636 – Free to publish. Automatically open access after 24 months, but authors are encouraged to archive and share their work publicly even before then.

Asian Herpetological Research, IF 1.516 – Completely open access, very cheap page charges (¥600 per grayscale page, ¥900 per colour page).

Zootaxa, IF 1.091 – Free to publish. Open access is $20 per page, so this is a really borderline case; many taxonomic works are well over 10 pages, so Zootaxa leans towards the blacklist.

Expensive OA Journals

These are journals for which there is either a high and unwaivable APC or an excessively high OA fee. By excessively high, I mean sometimes ≥100 individuals would need to buy access to an article for the journal to make the same amount of money they would get from OA on that article. I highly doubt the vast majority of articles achieve that number of purchases/downloads, so by setting the OA fee so high, the publishing houses/journals/societies are earning much more from your work than they would if you didn’t publish OA (and to be honest the fact that they are earning anything at all from your work is deeply problematic). The cost to the journal is no different, so this is pure profit to them. Because OA articles do perform better, in terms of readership and citations, than non-OA articles, most of us surely want to publish OA, and these journals are using that desire to demand these, in my opinion excessively high, OA fees. If OA is your goal, I recommend avoiding these journals unless you have either an institutional way to pay for them, or are rolling in cash.

NB: Some of these journals are still great if you don’t care about your research being OA, but that is not what this list is about. 

NB2: I think it goes without saying that all of the Springer Nature (e.g. Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Scientific Reports), and Science (e.g. Science, Science Advances) publishing groups’ journals fall in this category, so I have not bothered listing them.

NB3: These are roughly sorted from low to high price. However, bear in mind that (1) some are impossible to estimate because they depend on article length, and (2) those that allow payment in different currencies can be much much cheaper to pay in one currency than another, because of the market fluctuations in 2022).

Zookeys, IF 1.492 – Completely open access. APC is €780 for papers 1–40 pages long, €25 per page for papers up to 300 pages long.

Megataxa, IF not indexed (too new) – Completely open access. APC is $20 per page, so the same as Zootaxa, but Megataxa requires OA, and expects monographs, so the fee is often very high. This is also a borderline case to me, but it is on the excessively expensive side of the border.

PeerJ, IF 3.061 – Completely open access, but APC is $1395. You can get around this by all of the authors having PeerJ membership, but that can wind up being more expensive than the APC (lifetime membership is currently at least $399 per author).

MDPI Animals (and related MDPI journals), IF 3.231 – Borderline predatory publishing house. Completely open access, but APC is CHF 1800+VAT.

PLoS One, IF 3.752 – Completely open access, but APC is $1805.

Herpetologica (IF 2.653) & Herpetological Monographs (IF 2.909) – Open access fee for members of the HL is $2000, non-members pay $2500. APC even for members for paywalled articles is high at $25 per page for HL members, $74 for non-members. Fees are only waived completely if all authors are HL members. $400 per colour page in print.

Ichthyology and Herpetology, IF 1.857 – Free to publish if the corresponding author is a member of the ASIH (as long as fewer than 10 colour figures), but $200 per published page for non-members‽ Open access is $2000 for members, $3500 for non-members.

Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science (and related Frontiers journals), IF not indexed (too new) – Borderline predatory publishing house. Completely open access, but APC is $2080 for normal articles.

Amphibia-Reptilia, IF 1.839 – No APC, but open access fee is €2150/$2550. Members of SEH receive a 40% discount on this.

Ecology and Evolution, IF 3.17 – Completely open access. APC is $2,200/£1,600/€1,800, but there are waivers and discounts to authors from developing countries. Note that although I think the fees are still excessive, Ecology and Evolution have the single best philosophy statement I have ever come across, and I think this is a fantastic journal.

Zoologischer Anzeiger, IF 1.581 – Open access fee is $3310.

The Science of Nature, IF 2.427 – Open access fee is £2290.00/$3390.00/€2690.00.

Organisms, Diversity & Evolution, IF 2.663 – Open access fee is £2290.00/$3390.00/€2690.00.

African Journal of Herpetology, IF 2.563 – No APC, but open access fee is $3400 even for authors from developing countries.

Zoological Research, IF 4.56 – Completely open access, but APC is $1500 for up to 10 pages, then $100 per page up to 15 pages, then $200 per page, and there is a $100 surcharge per colour page.  

Zoologica Scripta, IF 3.185 – Open access fee is $3600/£2400/€3000.

Journal of Zoology, IF 2.394 – Open access fee is $3900/£2600/€3250.

Uncertain

Current Herpetology, IF 0.737 – Free to publish (but you may have to pay for colour figures in print), and apparently some papers are chosen to become OA for free, but it is not clear if you can publish OA yourself, nor what that costs.

The Herpetological Bulletin, IF 0.422 – Free to publish, free to read for society members, automatically OA after one year, but apparently no way to make something OA sooner.

Herpetological Review, IF 0.216 – Part of the journal is open access, part is not. There are apparently no page charges, but the journal doesn’t seem to have a means to make specific articles open access.

To be filed

Thanks to various individuals for bringing these additional journals to my attention. I will categorise them soon.

• Herpetozoa
• Reptiles and Amphibians
• Butlletí de la Societat Catalana d’Herpetologia
• Bonn zoological Bulletin
• North-Western Journal of Zoology
• Ecologica Montenegrina
• Records of the Australian Museum
• Records of the Western Australian Museum
• Memoirs of the Queensland Museum
• Memoirs of the Museum Victoria
• ZooNova
• Acta Herpetologica
• Amphibian and Reptile Conservation
• Captive & Field Herpetology
• Taprobanica

Abbreviations:

APC = Article Processing Charge

ASIH = American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology

BHS = British Herpetological Society

DGHT = Deutsche Gesellschaft für Herpetologie und Terrarienkunde

HL = Herpetologist’s League

OA = Open Access

SEH = Societas Europaea Herpetologica

SSAR = Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles