Today, scientific publishing is serious business. Funding bodies and universities demand open access (OA) publishing for several reasons, including reaching a wider audience. Career advancement for individual researchers implies visibility in highly prestigious publication channels. OA publishing and high prestige may be in conflict, but doesn't have to be. Green OA, or parallel publishing, gives the researcher the possibility of fulfilling OA demands while publishing in well known channels with high prestige. Gold OA may present a greater challenge, since these channels are often new, unknown and infested by so called predatory publishers.

The present study aims to investigate publication patterns of researchers, with particular focus on gold OA and prestige. The researcher population used consists of researchers working at Swedish universities using the institutional repository DiVA. Gold OA journals are identified through the Directory of Open Access Journals and prestige is defined with the Norwegian model, where publication channels are divided in two levels. The share of gold OA journals in the Norwegian model is contrasted with the researchers' choice of publication channels. Findings suggest that researchers prefer gold OA journals belonging to the higher level in the Norwegian model. However, this may be the result of something else affecting researchers. These and other issues are discussed, as well as details of the publication patterns.