Publishing costs vary and may influence where you publish. Some publishers offset publishing costs by charging authors. Costs range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Some journals are free to publish in as subscribers absorb the publishing costs, but you do not own copyright to the article in return.
Open access is alternative way to publish an article. Open Access Australasia describes open access (OA) as a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers.
NSLHD staff can publish in BMJ Case Reports for free using the NSLHD Libraries subscription.
You can negotiate the terms of the publishing agreement so you don't need to sign over the copyright; many journals are open to this. Regardless of publishing model, authors need to understand the agreement and if not happy with it add an addendum (eg SPARC author addendum).
There are different models of open access which vary in terms of costs, access, who holds the copyright.
The Open Access Toolkit was designed to guide researchers through the process of making their journal articles Open Access. It was created under the direction of the Council of Aotearoa New Zealand University Librarians.
To find out which model a particular journal uses, check the publisher website, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or Jisc Open Policy Finder (previously Sherpa).
Predatory journals are open access journals which look like legitimate journals but they provide a poor or non-existent peer review service. They sometimes charge submission fees and publication fees to authors. They may also accept most or all papers submitted to them. After publishing in a predatory journal, authors may find it difficult to publish the same paper in a legitimate journal. Note: PubMed contains predatory journals, as publishers self-submit their indexing.
"Get Me Off Your F***ing Mailing List" is a well-known hoax paper which a predatory journal theoretically peer reviewed and then accepted. They tried to charge a fee to publish it.
Think, Check, Submit provides checklists to help you identify if your chosen journal/book is trusted.