Open access: How do I find open access publication channels?

Open Access journals can be found in  

• DOAJ.org, an index of journals, which fulfil certain openness and other criteria
• The Jufo database, which contains filters for DOAJ inclusion and parallel publishing policy (at "Sherpa/Romeo, tick 'green' and 'blue'  to filter out journals which allow parallel publishing of the postprint or the final version). 

Books and book publisher are found in DOABooks.org (Directory of Open Access Books).

Reliability of open access journals is checked in the same way as for traditional scholarly publications. Check:

• is information about the journal found in reliable directories like DOAJ or Jufo?
• Is the journal indexed in central databases in its field of research (such as Web of Science or Scopus)?
   
• is the publisher's contact information on the website complete?
• does the journal have an ISSN-number
   
• have other researchers in your field published with this publisher?
• are the articles previously published of good quality?  
• what kind of peer review process is used for submitted material?
• who are the editors and who is on the editorial board of the journal?

Another very good checklist: Think Check Submit.

NB! Don't respond to flattering e-mail offers from predatory journals and unreliable book publishers. Publishing with them may harm your reputation.

There are publishers with murky motives. These predatory publishers (or vanity publishers) are primarily interested in collecting APCs and publish material without proper review procedures. They send out tempting spam messages and offer fast publication and membership in editorial boards etc. to make researchers pay the fees.

Reliable journals are found by following the advice on Think, check, submit: http://thinkchecksubmit.org
 

See also:

• Beall, Jeffrey. Dangerous Predatory Publishers Threaten Medical Research. Journal of Korean Medical Science 31, no. 10 (2016), 1511-1513. https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2016.31.10.1511
• Butler, Declan. Investigating Journals: The Dark Side of Publishing. Nature 495, no. 7442 (2013), 433. DOI: 10.1038/495433a
• Craft, Anna R. Is This a Quality Journal to Publish In? How Can You Tell? Serials Review 42, no. 3 (2016), 237-239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00987913.2016.1196844 eller https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/A_Craft_Is_2016.pdf
• Shen, Cenyu. 'Predatory' Open Access: A Longitudinal Study of Article Volumes and Market Characteristics. BMC Medicine 13 (2015), 230. DOI: 10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2
• Triggle, Chris R., and David J. Triggle. From Gutenberg to Open Science: An Unfulfilled Odyssey. Drug Development Research 78.1 (2017), 3–23. DOI: 10.1002/ddr.21369

Sometimes bibliometric measures are used to judge journal impact.

Jufo | Impact Factor | H-index | SNIP | Eigenfactor metrics | Journal Immediacy Index | SCImago Journal Rank (SRJ) | CiteScore

The measures are not reliable for for instance topic relevance (which is decisive for choosing the right publication venue), they may be misleading and they can be played. Also some can't be applied to all journals, for instance some languages and fields of research are not indexed  or only partly indexed in the databases underlying the metrics. It also takes time (sometimes years) before new journals are indexed.

Here is a description of the measures.