Open-access venues in data management research
(maintained by Pierre Senellart)

Scope

This page provides a list of scientific venues (conference, journals, and some notable workshops) which indicates if they are open-access or closed-access. It focuses on international venues relevant to data management researchers (either in this core area, or in another connected area where data management researchers frequently publish), peer-reviewed by experts in the field, and reputable in their area.

Feel free to contact me if you would like me to include some relevant conference or journal that is currently not listed, or if you have corrections to make to some entries. Note that the reputability criterion is somewhat subjective, and I will make the decision as to whether a venue satisfies this condition.

Coverage of areas that are non-core data management research is not expected to be comprehensive; coverage of workshops cannot be complete either, due to the large number of existing workshops.

Dimensions of Open Access

We consider the following questions to determine how open a venue is:

  1. Is access to published articles restricted by the publisher? If published articles are not freely available to everyone, this is clearly not open-access.
  2. Does the publisher require some form of exclusive ownership on the article? This may be in the form of copyright transfer, or exclusive licensing. If so, the venue cannot be considered open-access, even if the publisher makes individual exceptions such as allowing reposting on the author's Web site or of a pre-version on a pre-print server. Indeed, it is still impossible for third-parties to redistribute published articles, hence build datasets of published articles.
  3. Is the publisher charging authors to publish their articles? If so, is the fee commensurate to actual costs? Exemples of charges that are acceptable are those that are included in (reasonable) conference fees or low article processing charges (APC) such as those of LIPIcs.

If content is freely accessible, APCs are non-existent or low, and no exclusive publishing rights are granted or the content is licensed by the publisher under a free, permissive, license (such as Creative Commons BY-SA or less restrictive), we classify the venue as open-access, in green in the table below. If content is freely accessible but other conditions are not satisfied, the venue appears in yellow; otherwise, in red (in one case, where the situation is intermediary, it is in orange). In addition, we also provide information on the license used for publishing content.

Note that many publishers offer the authors a choice between a closed-access model and paying a large sum (of the order of 1,000 USD) for the article to be freely available. This choice unfortunately makes it impossible to rely on the fact that all content published in a venue will be freely accessible (indeed, such an option is rarely chosen by authors); consequently, readers are forced to keep paying subscription fees for this venue. In addition, the amounts charged are disproportionate to what full open-access publishers charge. For these reasons, we do not mention this choice in the table below. We provide further down some indications on current article processing charges for different publishers.

List of Venues

Article processing charges are not mentioned in the table below: it so happens that they are either free (for journals) or potentially included in the conference registration fee (for conferences).

AreaVenueTypePublisherAccess restrictedExclusive rights requiredLicense
01 - DB Systems EDBT Conf. OpenProceedings no no CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
01 - DB Systems PVLDB Mixed VLDB Endowment no no CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
04 - Web and IR WWW Conf. IW3C2 no yes CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory STOC Conf. ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory ITCS Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
01 - DB Systems SIGMOD Conf. ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
04 - Web and IR WebDB Workshop ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
02 - DB Systems & Theory AMW Workshop CEUR-WS.org no no Academic license
08 - Data Mining KDD Conf. ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory SODA Conf. SIAM in principle yes SIAM Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory LICS Conf. ACM, IEEE yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
IEEE Copyright Policy
04 - Web and IR SIGIR Conf. ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
04 - Web and IR WSDM Conf. ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory TheoretiCS Journal Episciences.org no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory JACM Journal ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
02 - DB Systems & Theory TODS Journal ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems SIGSPATIAL Conf. ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
03 - DB Theory PODS Conf. ACM not through OpenTOC yes ACM Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems CIKM Conf. ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
03 - DB Theory ICDT Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
03 - DB Theory TIME Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory FOCS Conf. IEEE yes yes IEEE Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems ICDE Conf. IEEE yes yes IEEE Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory LMCS Journal Episciences.org no no CC BY-ND 4.0
06 - CS Theory DMTCS Journal Episciences.org no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory ToC Journal ToC no no CC BY 3.0
06 - CS Theory CJTCS Journal U. Chicago no no CC BY 3.0
06 - CS Theory ICALP Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory STACS Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory CSL Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
01 - DB Systems TKDE Journal IEEE yes yes IEEE Copyright Policy
07 - AI SAT Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
07 - AI ESWC Conf. Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
07 - AI ISWC Conf. Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
02 - DB Systems & Theory VLDB Journal Journal Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems DaPD Journal Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems TLDKS Journal Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems DKE Journal Elsevier yes yes Elsevier Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems Inf. Syst. Journal Elsevier yes yes Elsevier Copyright Policy
05 - General CS Inf. Process. Lett. Journal Elsevier yes yes Elsevier Copyright Policy
05 - General CS JCSS Journal Elsevier yes yes Elsevier Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory TCS Journal Elsevier yes yes Elsevier Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems CIDR Conf. CIDR no no CC BY 3.0
06 - CS Theory ToCS Journal Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
07 - AI JAIR Journal AI Access Foundation no no CC BY 4.0
07 - AI IJCAI Conf. IJCAI no yes IJCAI Copyright Policy
07 - AI AIJ Journal Elsevier yes yes Elsevier Copyright Policy
07 - AI AAAI Conf. AAAI no yes AAAI Copyright Policy
07 - AI KR Conf. AAAI no yes AAAI Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems DEXA Conf. Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
01 - DB Systems DASFAA Conf. Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
08 - Data Mining PKDD Conf. Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
09 - Machine Learning ECML Conf. Springer yes yes Springer Copyright Policy
09 - Machine Learning NeurIPS Conf. NeurIPS Foundation no no unspecified
09 - Machine Learning ICML Conf. PMLR no no CC BY 4.0
09 - Machine Learning COLT Conf. PMLR no no CC BY 4.0
09 - Machine Learning JMLR Journal JMLR no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory MFCS Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory FoSSaCS Conf. Springer no no CC BY 4.0
10 - Prog. Languages ESOP Conf. Springer no no CC BY 4.0
10 - Prog. Languages POPL Conf. ACM no no CC BY 4.0
10 - Prog. Languages ICFP Conf. ACM no no CC BY 4.0
10 - Prog. Languages PLDI Conf. ACM not through OpenTOC yes ACM Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory FSCD Conf. Schloss Dagstuhl no no CC BY 4.0
06 - CS Theory TOCL Journal ACM yes yes ACM Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory SIAM J. Comput. Journal SIAM yes yes SIAM Copyright Policy
06 - CS Theory Fundamenta Informaticae Journal Episciences.org and IOS Press no yes IOS Press Copyright Policy

The area classification is quite ad hoc, and some venues could also fit in other areas; this is not perfect, but the goal was simply to ease readbility of the table.

Many thanks to Antoine Amarilli for advice in compiling this list and presenting the information therein.

Article Processing Charges

Some publishers require an article processing charge (APC) for each published open-access article, as an alternative to the closed-access model. The author may have a choice between the two models. The cost is sometimes hidden to authors as part of conference registration fees. Here are the current APCs charged by different publishers:

Schloss Dagstuhl (LIPIcs)
30–60 EUR, depending on year; these are mandatory charges, there is no closed-access choice.
ACM
700–1700 USD, depending on venue type and ACM membership status.
IEEE
1350–1950 USD, depending on venue.
SIAM
2625 USD.
Springer
3000 USD or 2200 EUR.
Elsevier
65–5000 USD, depending on venue (typically 1500–3100 USD for journals mentioned in this Web page).
IOS Press
1850 EUR

List of (exclusively) open-access publishers

Other Resources

Contributors

Some content on this page has been contributed by: