57 free-to-publish journals published in South Africa

57 peer-reviewed open access journals published in South Africa charge no article processing charge and no other author fees, according to the DOAJ. 18 of them are indexed in Scopus and ranked by SCImago (4 in Q1 or Q2); the rest are listed too, Scopus-ranked journals first. Data snapshot: October 2026.

Of the Scopus-ranked journals here, 22% are Q1 or Q2 (site-wide: 40%). Their median self-reported time from submission to publication is 18 weeks. The largest subject areas are Social Sciences, Environmental Science and Medicine. 100% accept manuscripts in English and 7% accept at least one other language.

All 57 journals

Sorted by best SCImago quartile, then SJR. Click a column header to sort by it; click a second column to add a tiebreak. The search box narrows the list. Time to publish is the journal’s own DOAJ figure (average weeks from submission to publication).

Where these journals come from

About this list

Country means the publisher’s country as recorded in the DOAJ, not the language or the authors’ origin: most journals accept submissions from anywhere. Community-verified journals were checked by hand against a short checklist (ISSN, peer review, no fees, recent issues) and are marked “Not in DOAJ”.

Diamond open access (also called Platinum) means the journal is free to read and free to publish in: the DOAJ records it with “APC: no” and “other fees: no”. Quartiles come from the latest SCImago edition: Q1 is the top 25% of journals in a subject category, Q4 the bottom 25%; the lists show a journal’s best quartile. Read more in our open access guide.

Before submitting, always confirm the journal on its own website and in the DOAJ, verify Scopus indexing by ISSN with the Scopus check rather than trusting claims on the journal’s site, and watch out for look-alike titles (see the predatory journal checklist).

Other countries