Open Access: Terminology of Open Access

Article Processing Charge (APC)

A fee sometimes used for funding the publication of scholarly articles in an open access or hybrid journal. The fee is often covered by a funding agency, the researcher's institution, or the author themselves.

May also be known as: Publication fee, OA publication fee

Author Rights

The rights retained by the author when entering a contractual agreement with the publisher. Open access encourages authors to negotiate with publishers to retain the rights to control the re-use and distribution of the work.

Book Processing Charge (BPC)

The Book Processing Charge (BPC) is a payment made to cover the costs of publishing a book Gold Open Access. Typically this will be covered by the author’s funding body or institution.

cOAlition S

cOAlition S is a group of national research funding organizations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), whose goal is to ensure all the research they fund is made open access immediately on publication.

Creative Commons (CC) licences

A non-profit organization providing customized licenses which permit the author to retain selective rights and waive others for the re-use and re-mix of research. Authors might be required or advised by their funders to choose particular CC licences, such as CC-BY or CC-BY-ND, when publishing their research as Gold OA. 

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)

DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books, as well as helping users to find trusted open access book publishers.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

DOAJ hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA).

Double-dipping

Double-dipping is a term used to describe cases where both authors and readers are being charged for the same content. 

Embargoed open access

Also called delayed open access. This is a subscription model that provides open access to content after an embargo period expires. For example, the most current content may only be available to subscribers, while the archived issues are open access.

Gold Open Access

Research published in a journal that is immediately and openly available when published.

Green Open Access

Posting a version of a published work in an institutional or disciplinary repository, often with a link to the published work. The repository version provides the open access to the work.

May also be known as: Institutional archiving, local archiving

Hybrid open access

Publishers make an individual article freely available after payment of an article processing charge, while still selling access through subscriptions.

Mining - Data/Text

The process of deriving information from machine-read material, such as using large quantities of data and text to extract information and recombining it to identify patterns.

Open access

Open access (OA) refers to making scholarly research freely available online for anyone to read. Typically, open access also allows readers to redistribute, re-use and adapt content in new works.

Open Education: A transformative movement rooted in the principle of supporting high-quality education for all. Open Education Resources are openly licensed, online material designed for teaching and learning.

Plan S

Plan S refers to a suite of policies to ensure that all research funded by funders in cOAlition S is made open access immediately on publication by 2025.

Postprint

The accepted article after incorporating revisions and edits resulting from the peer review process The article does not include the pagination and type-setting of the publisher's print. Also known as final accepted manuscript or author accepted manuscript (AAM).

Preprint

The first draft of an article before peer review and the accompanying edits. Also known as the submitted version.

Publisher's Print

The final published article in a publisher generated PDF file.

Repository - Institutional/Disciplinary

Archives for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Commonly associated with green open access. Institutional repositories are managed by a university or organization to curate the scholarly output of the institution's researchers. Disciplinary repositories, such as arXiv and PubMed Central, collect scholarship on specific subjects regardless of the researcher's institutional affiliation.

Transformative Agreements

Transformative Agreements are made between publishers and research institutions to support the transformation of the institution's published research outputs to Gold Open Access. These agreements include provisions to cover costs of Gold OA content published by researchers based at the institution, negating the need for APCs when those researchers publish their work Gold OA.

May also be known as: Institutional agreement, Read & Publish agreement, OA Publishing Agreement

Self-archiving

Self-archiving refers to authors depositing a copy of an electronic document online to make it freely available to others to read. The term usually refers to depositing documents such as peer-reviewed research journal and conference articles, as well as theses and book chapters, in an author's institutional repository or open archive for the purpose of maximizing its accessibility, usage and citation impact.

May also be known as: Green archiving, Green OA

Green OA 

This method allows the author to place a version of the published research in various platforms, including disciplinary repositories, institutional repositories, or personal webpages.

Some publishers allow their final version (usually a pdf) to be self-archived, while others only allow the author’s pre-print or post-print (final version after peer-review) to be self-archived either immediately or after an embargo period. Publisher policies on self-archiving and versions are available in either the SHERPA/RoMEO database or on the publisher or journal website (usually more up to date than SHERPA). 

Gold OA 

The Gold OA method makes published works available immediately on publication. Many publishers require the author to pay an Article Professing Charge for immediate open access. Public Library of Science (PLoS) and BioMed Central are examples of Gold OA publishers.

With Hybrid OA, publishers of subscription-based journals offer an OA option to authors (with an APC, sometimes up to $5,000). With this option, an individual article is openly available immediately, while the other articles are still available only through subscription.

Platinum or Diamond OA 

A true Open Access journal: there is no cost to the author or reader, because these journals are often sponsored by universities, government information centers, or even groups of researchers.

Bronze OA 

Publishers can choose to make an article freely available to read (with no APC), but they can also end the free availability at any time.