Articles published using the Gold Open Access model are made immediately and freely available at the time of publication. The typical costs associated with publishing a journal are covered by the charging of an Article Processing Charge (APC), charged to authors at the point of publication, so that readers of the article are not charged at the point of consumption. So, the advantage of Gold is that the full publisher's version becomes immediately available, but at a cost.
All articles in a Gold OA journal are free to read and reuse. In some cases it is possible to pay (an APC) for an individual article to be made immediately open access in a traditional subscription journal. These (somewhat) 'Gold' journals are referred to as 'Hybrid' Open Access journals.
The Directory of Open Access Journals is a community-curated list of open access journals and aims to be the starting point for all information searches for quality, peer reviewed open access material. If you're interested in publishing in a Gold OA journal and would like to identify what journals are Gold, simply consult the DOAJ to either look up individual journal titles or browse all journals by (Library of Congress) discipline.
DCU has an increasing number of agreements that aim to offset APC costs for DCU authors against subscription costs. Qualifying DCU authors publishing in these journals can publish Gold/Hybrid without paying an APC. Details of these transformative agreements and how each one works are available here.
