Open access
The Open Access Publishing Process for Journals
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Open Access Processes
Open Access (OA) articles should always be treated in the same way as any other article. Regardless of the publisher, they should go through the journal’s standard peer-review process and be accepted or rejected based on their own merit. The basic production processes (copyediting, typesetting, and proofreading) tend to be the same as well. For some hybrid journals, the publication of regular articles and Gold OA articles might be slightly different. Gold OA articles could be flagged to make them easy for readers to find or they could appear in a separate 'Mirror Journal', for example. Choosing to publish your article via the Gold or Green OA route should never have any influence on whether your article is accepted or on how long it takes for it to be published after acceptance.
The main difference (in terms of the publishing processes) between subscription articles and OA articles is the license that you'll need to sign. For Gold OA articles, this license will give readers more ability to reuse and (for certain contracts) adapt your work. For Green OA articles, it will allow you to post an early version of your article in certain repositories.
Gold Open Access
The fee to publish a Gold OA article is usually known as an Article Processing Charge or APC. The cost of the APC will vary depending on the discipline you're working in, the publisher you're working with and even the journal you're publishing in. In some cases, APCs can be as low as a couple of hundred pounds, but they can be over £10,000 for some prestige (usually STEM) journals. There are often discounts available for APCs and if your institution has a 'Transformative Deal' with the publisher, you may not have to pay one at all. It's always worth checking to see if these things might apply. The APC helps publishers to cover publication costs including typesetting, online hosting, supply to abstracting and indexing services, and permanent archiving of the published article. It also contributes towards maintaining the editorial, production and marketing infrastructure in place to support the journal.
Most publishers will allow you to pay the APC for your article at any time after it has been accepted for publication. If the publisher requests the fee before your manuscript has been officially accepted for publication, it's worth checking to see if they are a predatory journal. You can find out more information on how to spot a predatory journal here. It's always best to try to pay your APC as soon as possible after acceptance of your manuscript. If you're publishing in a hybrid journal and your fee is not received, your article may initially be published behind the paywall (it will become OA once you have paid the APC). If you're publishing in a fully Gold OA journal, the publication of your article might be delayed until the APC is paid.
A lot of publishers will give you the option to retroactively make your article Gold OA. If you'd like to make an article that was recently published retroactively OA, you're likely to have to pay the full APC. For articles that were published more than 18-24 months ago, there's often a fairly significant discount. In these cases, you can usually find information about the discounts on the publisher's website.
Green Open Access
The publishing process for Green OA articles is the same as it is for subscription articles. There's just an extra step at the end. At some point after the acceptance of your manuscript, you'll be able to deposit an earlier version of the manuscript in a repository or place it on a website. Depending on who you're publishing with, the time when you're allowed to post or deposit certain versions of your paper will change. You can see when you're able to post different versions of your manuscript if you publish with EUP below. The 'Author's Original' (AO or AOM) version is defined as the first version of the manuscript that you submitted to the journal for consideration, before any peer review had taken place. The 'Accepted Manuscript' (AM or AAM) is the version of the manuscript that was accepted for publication, but had not yet gone through any form of copyediting, typesetting or proofreading. The 'Version of Record' is the article that is published in the print and online issues of the journal.
|
Type of Repository |
Personal or departmental webpage |
Institutional repository |
Non-commercial subject repository |
Commercial repository or social networking site |
|
Author’s Original |
At any time |
At any time |
At any time |
At any time |
|
Accepted Manuscript |
On acceptance |
On acceptance |
12 months after publication |
Abstract only (requires a link to the Version of Record) |
|
Version of Record |
Abstract only (requires a link to the Version of Record) |
Abstract only (requires a link to the Version of Record) |
Abstract only (requires a link to the Version of Record) |
Abstract only (requires a link to the Version of Record) |
What to Expect at EUP
We are happy to support OA publishing and offer authors the options to publish via either the Gold or Green OA route. We also have one Diamond (sometimes called Platinum) OA journal – Film-Philosophy. The versions of record of all articles published in this journal are immediately and fully OA upon publication with no cost to the authors.
Gold Open Access
Find all the information on Gold Open Access at Edinburgh University Press on the Edinburgh Open FAQ.
Green Open Access
With the exception of articles published in Film-Philosophy and those for which authors choose to pay an APC, all articles published in EUP journals are technically Green OA papers. Every author has the option to post the accepted and original versions of their manuscript in online repositories. There are embargoes (listed in the table above) that restrict when you are able to make these versions of the paper available though and these depend on what type of repository you wish to use.