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is a professor of genetics at the University of California, Berkeley. He鈥檚 a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator. He juggles over a dozen graduate students and postdocs. Yet his lab has never published a paper in Science, Nature, Cell, The Lancet or the New England Journal of Medicine. None appear in traditional high-impact genetics journals, either.

Instead, the lab鈥檚 papers appear only in open-access journals 鈥� those that are available to read online and free from financial 鈥渢olls鈥� such as paywalls, subscriptions or other barriers restricting their audience 鈥� something the traditional journals can鈥檛 always boast.

These journals appear to be something researchers are warming to. In 2013 and 2014, academic publisher Taylor & Francis . Between the two surveys, respondents grew more confident that it brings wider visibility, and they were more receptive to post-publication peer review.

Opinions remained divided as to quality standards, however, and open access doesn鈥檛 mean 鈥渇ree.鈥� Some open-access journals are subsidized or require authors to stump up the cost of publishing their work, for instance. But the broad choice of journals and the opportunity for crowd-sourced peer review does offer the chance for faster publication and a potentially unlimited readership.

An increasingly open model of scholarly publishing has thrived in the past decade. In 2008, .

Last year, the White House told other large federal agencies to , while , its seven-year, 鈧�80 billion research and innovation program.

As of 2011, open-access journals made up about 11 per cent of the total number of journals, and Eisen, who co-founded the early open-access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) in 2001, thinks they could eventually replace traditional toll journals altogether.

Eisen is certainly sold on the new approach. Choosing an open-access journal, he says, is not as risky as people think. 鈥淚 was told by people that there was no way I would get tenure at Berkeley unless I published papers in the big journals,鈥� he says. But having been tenured in 2007 and made full professor last year, it certainly hasn鈥檛 held him back.

What do other scientists think of the option? And is Eisen鈥檚 a safe path to emulate?

Green or gold?

Open access comes in various flavors. With 鈥済old,鈥� open access authors pay an 鈥渁rticle-processing fee鈥� in exchange for open access on the publisher鈥檚 site. This is in contrast to traditional journals, which make money through reader subscriptions. Some of these journals, labeled 鈥渉ybrids,鈥� do offer an open-access option to authors willing to pay an extra fee.

Alternatively, with 鈥済reen鈥� open access, also known as self-archiving, a toll journal allows its published authors to post their own papers freely online, sometimes with an embargo period.

Open-access journals also often differ from toll journals in terms of their approach to peer review. PLoS ONE doesn鈥檛 judge whether research will affect its field, only whether it is technically sound, while the life sciences journal publishes articles that pass a quick soundness check, then allows for perpetual, crowdsourced peer review after publication. Hybrid journals, by contrast, retain traditional peer-review methods, offering the open-access option after they accept a paper.

Advocates say the open-access model replaces a distorted subscription model. They argue that university libraries pay steep subscription costs to publishers that enjoy huge profit margins, even as the university鈥檚 researchers provide those publishers with unpaid peer review services and journal content. They also point out the societal and scientific benefits of freely circulating knowledge, and some studies suggest open-access papers may lead to more citations for authors.

鈥淭he papers that we value during tenure and promotion are the traditional journals,鈥� says physicist of Washington State University in Pullman. 鈥淭he open-access journals, so far, are not as highly rated.鈥�

But stigma may depend on the subject, department and the age of an assessor. Most open-access journals are in the biomedical sciences, and fields like genetics already enjoy high-impact open-access options, although journals in other fields may be too young, small or shady to boast much impact yet.

Eisen says academic success and a history of high-impact publication go hand-in-hand, but correlation doesn鈥檛 imply causation 鈥� and at any rate, an advisor鈥檚 letter carries more weight than publications.

鈥淭he reason why successful people have more high-profile papers is that they鈥檙e doing high-profile science,鈥� he says. 鈥淭o believe鈥� that their success was because they published in Nature and not because they did science that got them published in Nature, I think, is crazy.鈥�

The price of success

A significant criticism of open-access publications is the scale of the author fees researchers must pay. Some journals charge thousands of dollars, and so far, only some funders and universities are willing to help foot the bill.

, an associate professor of mathematics at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, calls the current subscription system outrageous, but says he doesn鈥檛 think publication fees are an improvement.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 want my university deciding which of my articles is valuable enough for it to pay to publish, and I certainly don鈥檛 want to be paying for my own publishing,鈥� he says.

Despite such problems, gold open-access is likely to prevail within 10 years, according to physicist of the American Physical Society. That鈥檚 in part because lawmakers are convinced taxpayers have a right to access research their taxes helped pay for, and partly because no genuinely alternative system has emerged.

Choose your journal

Another worrying issue is that the rise of open access presents an opportunity for . Whether it鈥檚 by plagiarizing articles, forcing authors to sign over copyright or failing to mention fees until after publication, they represent a minefield for researchers prepared to give open access a try.

, an open-access expert at Michigan State University in East Lansing, says the first way to vet a journal is to check if it appears in respected indices or bibliographic databases. Solomon says it鈥檚 not hard for a questionable journal to obtain an official-seeming international serial number or assign unique digital identifiers to digital documents, as established journals do. But, he adds, 鈥渢hese sleazeball journals are not going to get into MEDLINE [the database for the United States National Library of Medicine]鈥�.

Next, see how many journals the publisher鈥檚 website contains. If there are multitudes, each with few or no papers, that鈥檚 a bad sign. So, for that matter, are scrappy websites or solicitation emails laced with errors.

The best way to judge quality, Solomon says, is simply to read some of the journal鈥檚 articles to see if they鈥檙e up to snuff. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really not hard to spot these journals if you look at them with a little bit of caution,鈥� he says. 鈥淢ost of them stick out like sore thumbs.鈥�

Once you master the publication landscape in your field, Eisen says there鈥檚 even a case for avoiding traditional journals outright. A CV with both toll and open-access publications might be read by a potential employer as a sign that you favor publishing in prestigious toll journals, which calls into question the quality of all of your open-access publications. A purely open-access CV, by contrast, must be evaluated by employers entirely on its merits.

鈥淭hey look at your publication record in an entirely different way,鈥� Eisen says. 鈥淚t has helped immeasurably for me and other people in my lab to be able to say, 鈥楲ook, just judge my science on the science.'鈥�