[dannykwells]

Open access journals by definition are almost never free/minimal cost - the idea is the the author's are paying more of the costs associated with publication, not less. But in return, your article can be read or accessed by anyone.

If you want to fork over 5k, I would recommend PLOS ONE as a major, well recognized open access journal that takes the "publish anything with scientific merit" approach.

If you do not want to pay, Arxiv is your best bet. However, I will say that, while good papers end up on arxiv, so do lots and lots of bad ones (that's the point) and there's no concept of "peer review" there.

[freeradical13]

That's a very helpful summary, thanks. From another comment, it seems arXiv requires academic affiliation or endorsement: https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

Are there any others?

[mindcrime]

My understanding is that whether or not endorsement is required is dependent on which "area" you submit to. And even if I'm wrong about that, "endorsement" in their terms is really just meant to mean "this person is not a total quack / spammer / etc." So don't feel shy about reaching out to people in the academic community who are potential endorsers and just ask "I want to submit this to ArXiv, would you be willing to give it a quick look and possibly endorse me so I can submit?"

If you already know somebody in the academic community, it would probably be better to try them first. But if not, it appears that ArXiv etiquette allows cold-emailing people... they just ask you not to blast requests out to mass numbers of people simultaneously.

[chrisseaton]

You can't post on arXiv unless you're an established researcher, I believe.

[hprotagonist]

well, until someone vouches for you.