It's nice to have open access journals, but some of these publishers have shady practices and can end up publishing just plain bad science (not that traditional journals are exempt from corruption). I found a big long list of bad open-access publishers/journals; is there a corresponding list of vetted good ones? Simply not being on the "bad" list does not mean one is good.
Sometimes the usual databases (pubmed, etc) have free full texts, but they only list so much. Google Scholar may bring you more results, but there is still no quick way to check for quality, as it is not curated. Not everyone can get themselves listed in decent, curated databases, but still be a decent journal/paper.
Edited by MiaouMixe, 11 November 2015 - 03:04 AM.