But how can I publish open access if I have no money?

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I think we can safely say now that open access has become a mainstream option for academic publishing and the Research Council UK's open access policy alongside the UK Government backed Finch Report will increase the number of open access articles and journals available. However there is only a limited amount of money and open access costs! While it is true that there are always costs to publishing it is not wholly true that to publish in an open access journal a fee has to be paid. Here are some ways to avoid fees but still be open:

1. Look through the Directory of Open Access Journals which lists over 700 open access journals in the areas of Medicine and Public Health with the majority not having any publication charges at all!

2. If you a student you can request a discount or in certain cases a complete waiver of the article processing charge from publishers such as PLoS and BioMed Central. Also remember that all staff and students from LSHTM automatically qualify for a 15% discount from BioMed Central.

3. Try e-Life the recently launched biomedical and life sciences open access journal from Wellcome Trust, Max Planck Institute and Howard Hughes Institute. Currently they have no article processing charges and welcome submissions particularly from early career researchers.

Hopefully that will help but if you need some advice just let us know.