In the project B!SON, realized by TIB and SLUB Dresden, a recommender system for quality-assured open access journals has been implemented (project period: 04/2021-01/2023, funding reference: 16TOA034A). From the large amount of open access journals available, this system creates a list of suitable journals sorted according to thematic relevance. For this purpose, in addition to common bibliometric methods of determining similarity, machine learning methods are used, which can determine relevant publication venues based on the semantic similarity of the title or abstract of an article to be published.

While open access publishing requirements are steadily increasing and there is a growing number of open access journals, authors often lack knowledge of relevant, quality-assured open access journals that would be suitable for publishing their own research. A freely accessible tool that can be linked to local support structures will help to make the transition to open access successful.

The partners cooperate with OpenCitations and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and are in close exchange with institutions that advise authors. Several scientific institutions support the project.