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I'm asking this question from the perspective of someone who just wants to read journals rather than contribute to them. For the purpose of this question I'm using the definition of Open Access in the sense of the Budapest Open Assess Initiative:

"By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." (From the BOAI FAQ)

I'm aware of the mathematics journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals but I have no way of finding out from that list which journals are most respected by the community.

Scott Morrison
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axiomsofchoice
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    This is borderline for mathoverflow.net. We really only want "questions which can be answered", and the way this question is asked, it is likely to warrant discussion rather than definitive answers. That said, if someone wants to produce a table of eigenfactors for known Open Access journals, I'd vote that up. – Scott Morrison Oct 30 '09 at 21:12
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    I may be in a minority, but I don't read journals, I read papers. If a paper I hear of is interesting or relevant, then I'll go and see where I can find it. If I may ask the OP, why do you want to know which ones are "most important"? – Yemon Choi Oct 30 '09 at 22:01
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    I have to agree with Scott and Yemon. Not only is this a question that doesn't have an answer, I'm not even sure what the question is. What does "most important" mean. What kind of an answer are you looking for? I'm willing to reopen this question if it is edited to ask something specific. Perhaps what you really meant to ask is, "What are open-access journals I should know about? What distinguishes them from other journals? One journal per answer please. Vote up journals you really like (and leave a comment explaining why you like it, if possible)." – Anton Geraschenko Oct 30 '09 at 23:10
  • re: "I don't read journals, I read papers." Yes, but you have to pick a journal to send your papers to. – Jason Dyer Oct 31 '09 at 04:28
  • Jason: fair point, but for my own modest efforts this really doesn't come into it. "Not being crap" and "putting corrected proof copies online ASAP" are the two most important factors for me at the moment. "Important" is just far, far too vague, and too subjective. – Yemon Choi Oct 31 '09 at 10:12
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    @Anton - The question as written is exactly what I wanted to ask - it doesn't matter that I know about it, I want to know what the community respects. In composing it I used "Do good math jokes exist?", "Undergraduate Level Math Books" and "Most interesting mathematics mistake?" as models of what works well as a good mathoverflow question. I fail to see how they differ from the style of my question - are 'good' and 'interesting' less vague than 'important'? It would help if you could add some good vs. bad examples on the faq. As a community wiki it's ok that there's no answer to it (cf. faq). – axiomsofchoice Oct 31 '09 at 12:12
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    IMHO, this question is interesting and should be reopened. – Andreas Holmstrom Oct 31 '09 at 19:15
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    It's nice to see that closing a question doesn't necessarily offend the asker: http://twitter.com/axiomsofchoice/statuses/5337619766 – Scott Morrison Nov 01 '09 at 17:16
  • @Scott I'm not offended - far from it - but I am a little confused about the problems with the wording of this question. I'd be interested to know about your proposed changes - hopefully this might also be instructive for others writing similar questions. Best to continue this discussion via email though (my username at gmail). Don't get me wrong here, I really like what you guys are doing with this site but my guess is that as it (hopefully) continues to grow in popularity you're going to find it increasingly difficult to maintain the high level of editorial standards you've set for yourself. – axiomsofchoice Nov 03 '09 at 01:11

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