Authors can now submit articles to a number of high quality open access journals. The "Open Access" movement promotes free, unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed research publications. Open access journals frequently use author publication charges to pay for production. The Association of Research Libraries provides a comprehensive overview of the open access model.

Publishers typically require authors to sign over their copyright. Authors can retain some rights to their work to make it more widely available.

Researchers funded by the NIH are encouraged to deposit any resulting journal publications in PubMed Central as part of the NIH Public Access Policy.

Institutional Repositories such as UC's eScholarship provide a permanent, publicly accessible archive where authors can deposit their research articles. See the Library's overview for more information.