What is an open access journal?

An open access journal is a scholarly journal that provides free and unrestricted access to its content. Open access journals are available online and apply permissive reuse licences to the articles they publish. These journals may or may not charge submitting authors, based on their business model.

Open access journals are scholarly publications that are made freely available online to anyone with an internet connection. They provide a platform for researchers to share their findings and discoveries with the world, without any financial or legal barriers. Most often, open access articles make use of Creative Commons licences.

Open access journals are typically peer-reviewed and published in a range of disciplines, from the life sciences to the humanities. They may be fully free to both authors and readers (diamond open access journals) or free to readers upon the payment of an article processing charge by the author, their institution or funder (gold open access journals). By making research freely available, open access journals help to ensure that knowledge is shared and disseminated widely.

Alongside fully open access journals, there are other forms of open access that make this landscape somewhat difficult to navigate. These are summarised in the table below, alongside some key features and whether the route can be considered as an open access journal:

Route	Key features	Author pays?	Reader pays?	Open access journal?
Diamond	The journal does not charge authors nor readers Funding to run the journal must be secured from other sources Copyright is retained by the author, and the article is shared with a permissive licence for reuse	No	No	Yes
APC gold	Authors pay an article processing charge (APC) to make their work available via open access Waivers may be made available for authors in low- and middle-income countries The whole journal is available via open access Copyright is retained by the author, and the article is shared with a permissive licence for reuse	Yes	No	Yes
Hybrid	Authors pay an article processing charge (APC) to make their work available via open access Waivers may be made available for authors in low- and middle-income countries Only articles where the author has paid an article processing charge are available via open access while the remainder of the journal is behind a paywall Copyright is retained by the author, and the article is shared with a permissive licence for reuse	Yes	Only open access articles in a hybrid journal are free to read and reuse	No
Green	The accepted manuscript prior to typesetting is uploaded to an institutional repository The published version of record remains paywalled and available via subscription or direct purchase Copyright may be retained by the author; reuse rights may be limited An embargo period may be applied Gold or diamond open access articles may also be uploaded to institutional repositories	No	No	No
Bronze	The article is made available to read freely by the publisher Access to the output can be revoked There are typically limited or no reuse rights	No	No	No
Subscription	Traditional form of scholarly publishing, for which published content is paywalled and organisations must purchase a subscription or buy individual research outputs Copyright is transferred to the publisher by the author	No	Yes	No

It should be noted that many do not consider bronze as being open access, as articles made available via this route are not permanently and irrevocably available to reuse and access online. This also highlights the important difference between free to read (i.e. bronze) and open access content: the former is simply free to access online, with no possibility to reproduce, sell or modify that content, while the latter comes with permissive reuse rights, too.

References

Creative Commons. (n.d.). About CC Licences.

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