As a researcher, I am sure at some point you would have wanted a comprehensive glossary of open access terms to understand key concepts associated with the increasingly popular open access publishing trend. The open access movement has gained significant momentum in academic and research circles, with researchers looking to understand its benefits. This is further fuelled by the rise of digital technologies, which have changed the way in which we access and share research. To understand and navigate this rapidly evolving landscape, it is important to gain a solid understanding of the open access terms and concepts. This is where our glossary of open access terms comes in.
Whether you are a researcher, a student, or simply someone with an interest in open access, this glossary of open access terms is designed to provide you with a clear and concise explanation of the key terms and concepts that you are likely to encounter. So whether you’re looking to learn more about open access publishing, institutional repositories, or the different types of open access licenses, our glossary of open access terms has got you covered.
Glossary of open access terms
Open Access Publishing
Open access refers to the free and unrestricted access to research articles online. This means that anyone, anywhere in the world, can access, read, download, cite or link to the research, without having to pay a fee or subscribe to a journal. The only constraint is on copyright, where the authors have control over their work, which needs to be cited and acknowledged correctly.
Plan S initiative
Initiated in 2018 by cOAlition S, a global consortium of research funding bodies, Plan S requires all scholarly publications that are funded by its member organizations to be made immediately open access. Researchers who receive such funding under this plan can publish in reliable open access platforms or open access journals or make their research available in reputed open access repositories without an embargo period.
Article Processing Charges (APCs)
Article processing charges are fees that authors or their institutions must pay to cover the cost of publishing in an open access journal. These fees are typically used to cover the costs of peer review, editing, production, and hosting of articles.
Open Access Repository
An open access repository is a digital platform that provides free and instant access to scholarly research outputs such as articles, preprints, conference papers, and datasets. These structured online repositories are typically run by research institutions and other organizations, and serve as a central location for storing, preserving, and disseminating research outputs. Open access repositories allow authors to self-archive their work, making it publicly available for anyone to access and use, without requiring payment or permission from the copyright holder. They can also offer a range of services, such as search and browse capabilities, metadata management, and tools for tracking downloads and citations.
Gold Open Access
Gold open access refers to a model of publishing where articles are made immediately and freely available upon publication, usually through an open access journal or repository, without restrictions or paywalls. The cost of publishing is usually covered by authors or their institutions, either through APCs or through grants. There are different types of gold open access, including hybrid models where publishers offer both open access and subscription-based content, as well as fully open access journals.
Green Open Access
Green open access refers to a publishing model where authors publish in traditional paywalled journals but make their research articles freely available in a subject or institutional repository after an embargo period. This is also known as self-archiving, and can be done for research articles, preprints and post-prints, as well as for other types of research content. Usually, the publishers specify the embargo period after date of publication before the content can be made open access and may sometimes even stipulate which version of the research can be self-archived.
Diamond Open Access/Platinum Open Access
Diamond open access is a model of scholarly publishing that makes research articles freely available online, without any costs or fees to either authors or readers. Unlike other open access models, such as gold or green open access, diamond open access is often achieved through the support of academic institutions or scholarly societies, which provide the infrastructure and resources necessary to publish and disseminate research articles. Some diamond open access journals may also operate on membership fees or donations while others run on a volunteer basis, with editors, reviewers, and other contributors donating their time and expertise for free.
Bronze Open Access
Bronze open access doesn’t involve any payment of open access fees; it allows publishers to offer their research content for free reading. However, some advocates of open access and research funders do not consider Bronze open access to be truly open access because it depends entirely on the publisher, who can revoke free access to the publication at any time. In contrast, genuine open access publications have a Creative Commons license that makes the publication’s open access status irrevocable, and clearly states the terms of use and reuse.
Open Access Journal
An open access journal is a peer-reviewed publication that makes all of its articles freely available online without the need for subscriptions. These journals have well defined user rights and copyright terms. This open access term covers gold open-access journals, which charge APCs, and diamond or platinum open-access journals, which usually do not include additional charges and rely on voluntary work and institutional funding/grants.
Hybrid Open Access/Hybrid Journals
These open access terms are related, but they are not the same. In both cases, the hybrid publishing model provides a means of making individual articles open access on payment of an APC to the publisher, while the remainder of the journal’s content remains behind a paywall.
Hybrid open access refers to a publishing model where a journal offers authors the option to make individual articles openly accessible with APC payments, while non-open access articles in the same journal are still available to subscribers or for purchase on a pay-per-view basis. Hybrid Journals refer to the traditional subscription-based journals that offer authors the option of publishing their articles under an open access model by paying an article processing charge. This type of journal allows authors to make their articles freely available while still benefiting from the prestige of publishing in a well-respected journal.
Embargo Period
An embargo period is the time between the publication of an article and when it becomes freely available online. This is usually specified by the publisher or the funding agency and is designed to ensure that subscription-based journals have time to recoup their costs before the article becomes freely available.
Preprint
A preprint is an early version of a research article that has not yet been peer-reviewed and published in a journal. Researchers can make their preprints available through various online preprint servers, which establishes the primacy of their work and enables quick dissemination of their findings. This also offers authors an opportunity to gain feedback and improve their work before submitting it to a traditional peer-reviewed journal.
Postprints or author accepted manuscript (AAM)
A postprint is the version of preprint articles that have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication in a specific journal. The open access term for this is author accepted manuscript, which refers to the author’s final version of the article that incorporates all the changes requested by the journal editors and peer reviewers but does not include the publisher’s layout or formatting changes. Publishers often allow authors to self-archive postprints of their articles, but not the publisher’s ‘official’ version also known as the version of record.
Self-archiving
This is the process of making research articles and bibliographic metadata that has been published in a journal freely available on online open access repositories or servers. Before self-archiving your work, it is important to know and follow the legal requirements such as open access licences, copyrights, publisher embargo periods, etc. In some cases, self-archiving can also mean making the research content available on the author’s own website.
Sherpa Romeo
One of the common open access terms, Sherpa Romeo refers to an online publicly available resource that helps researchers and other stakeholders understand a publisher or journal’s policies on open access. It aggregates and examines data from publishers across the world and summarizes the open access archiving policies for each journal, including the specific conditions under which research papers can be archived.
Creative Commons License
A Creative Commons license is a flexible license is free for anyone to use to specify what someone can do with third-party copyright work. It allows the owner to determine how their research articles can be used and shared by others. This includes commercial and non-commercial use, the kind of attribution required, and to what extent users can share, modify, reuse, and build upon the original research.
Double Dipping
In the context of open access publishing, double dipping refers to a practice wherein a publisher charges authors an APC to make their articles available open access, while also charging readers or libraries for access to the same content. This is seen as problematic as publishers double their revenue by charging both authors and readers to provide open access to the same content. To avoid double dipping, some publishers have adopted fully open access models while others have transformative agreements, which combine subscription fees and APCs into a single payment.
There are many concepts associated with the open access publishing movement, and this is by no means and exhaustive list of open access terms. However, this comprehensive glossary of open access terms is meant to serve as a starting point as you navigate the landscape and make more informed decisions about where to publish your work.
R Discovery is the largest open-access research repository in the world with more than 40 million open-access articles, including 2 million preprints. It consists of research topics across all major subject areas, including medicine, biology, philosophy, political science, environmental science, social sciences, and psychology.
