Open Access (OA) provides free, immediate, online access to publicly funded scholarly research. Readers are permitted to read, download, copy and redistribute research outputs. Open Access ensures that your research reaches a wide audience.
Glossary of OA
There are lots of options when it comes to Open Access with Gold and Green being the most common, but what do they mean?
- Gold - the model provided by publishers in exchange for an article processing charge (APC) from the author or institution. Articles are published with a license making them immediately free to read.
- Green - Self-archiving deposit of a version of the manuscript into an institutional repository – generally an ‘Author Accepted Manuscript’ (AAM) version after peer-review, or the use of pre-print servers. Journal embargoes can delay posting the document.
- Hybrid - Hybrid journals contain a mixture of open access articles and closed access 'paywall' articles. This model is partially funded by subscriptions and charges for open access publication.
- Bronze - delayed open access, journals publish articles initially as subscription only then release them as free to read (but not to reuse, share or adapt) after an embargo period.They may return to paywall status later.
- Diamond - The journal published open access without charging authors or readers. These are generally journals supported by academic institutions, learned societies or government grants.
- Black - This would be digital piracy copies. It’s not really open access but many people get away with it either by sharing articles with contacts over email or shared drives, or putting it on Research Gate and claiming ignorance if it breaks copyright law.
- Paywalled - Journals keep articles behind a subscription paywall.
- Preprint - A version of the scholarly record or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Rights Retention - Authors retain the copyright in the author accepted manuscript (AAM). This is enabled by the Swansea University Research Publications Policy. Authors can immediately release the self-archived AAM in the repository at first publication so it is free to read.
- Transformative Agreements - Institutions and national library consortia (eg. JISC) sign publisher agreements to try to shift publishing output from pay-wall to open access content. The 'read & publish' agreements usually provide affiliated researchers with the opportunity to publish without paying direct costs to the publisher. The Library usually pays for these agreements on behalf of the institution. However, they are complex to navigate and some publishers only offer discounts for open access journal charges.
- Transitional Journals - titles moving from the hybrid model to the gold open access only model.
- Waivers - Publishers may offer APC waivers or discounts under certain circumstances but this is often limited to authors in low income countries.
- Creative Commons Licensing (CC) - a public copyright license that permits the creator of a copyrighted work to grant permission to use it. Our institutional preference is for CC-BY 4.0 (Attribution).
- DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
- DOAB - Directory of Open Access Books
