Offering the promise of sharing scholarship, open-access journals have become widespread in recent years; but so have misunderstandings about such journals, fueled by a lack of actual data. This issue of Library Technology Reports will help you look beyond the Directory of Open Access Journals, offering tools for a more substantive evaluation.

It shows the state of gold open access (OA), including the percentage of journals that require author-side fees as well as the percentage of articles published by those journals. Break-out data on publishing activity by academic discipline is also included, enabling you to tailor your approach according to subject area. A handy 14-step checklist of evaluation criteria will help you identify questionable journals in five minutes' time.