Open Library

orange unlock symbol on dark blue background

The IOS Press Open Library offers authors the option to publish their articles with full open access in all our journals.

This arrangement requires proper attribution when articles are re-used and redistributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Open access articles are not treated any differently than other articles published in IOS Press journals, in that they are peer-reviewed and form an integral part of the journal in which they are published. 

Journals

This section provides information about the open access options that are available to all journal authors, whether submitting to a fully open access journal or one of our hybrid journals – subscription journals that also allow for authors to opt to publish their articles as open access. We accommodate the primary open access models (see the definitions below).

We offer the hybrid model for subscription journals, as well as gold open access and green open access models – the latter is explained in our article sharing policy, which permit authors to self-archive open access articles. Authors begin their publishing journey with us by choosing which license to publish under and, in order to publish open access, the article processing charges will need to be paid in the form of an open access fee. If publishing in a hybrid journal that has a publication fee, authors will need to pay the publication fee and the open access fee. Authors will be kept updated about this throughout the submission process.

Upon manuscript submission, authors must confirm that they agree to the author copyright agreement. For subscription journals, there is a default general license and for fully open access journals the default license is CC BY-NC. When a manuscript is accepted for publication, the author of that journal article has a choice:

  • For hybrid journals, authors may continue with the default license – in which case the article will be closed, behind a pay-wall and available via subscription (either individual or institutional) or article purchase – or opt for a CC BY-NC license.
  • For hybrid and open access journals, all authors also have the option to publish under a CC BY license, as sometimes mandated by certain funding agencies. The CC BY license additionally allows the copyright holder to grant blanket permission for various actions to the reader/licensee, while respecting the rights of the author. 

See also the section below about the fees.

View Available Licenses
white background and three swirls of blue dots

OPEN ACCESS MODELS

Hybrid: Hybrid journals contain a mixture of open access and closed articles. A journal following this model is partially funded by subscriptions and only provides open access for individual articles for which the authors (or research sponsor) pay an open access fee.

Gold: In the gold open access model, the publisher makes all articles and related content available for free in perpetuity immediately on the journal’s website. In such publications, articles are licensed for sharing and reuse via Creative Commons licenses or similar.

Green: Self-archiving by authors is permitted under the green open access model. Independently from publication by a publisher, the author may also post the work to a website controlled by the author, the research institution that funded or hosted the work, or to an independent central open repository, where people can download the work without paying. This model is free for the author.

Subscribe to Open (S2O): S2O is an alternative sustainable subscription model that converts scholarly subscription journals to open access one year at a time. Under this model institutions continue to subscribe to journals of value to their community, and if sufficient revenue is generated, the entire subsequent year's content will be published open access. Under the S2O model, contributions will be published open access under a Creative Commons license, without the need for authors or funders to pay an article processing charge (APC).

white background and three swirls of blue dots

OPEN ACCESS FEES

The article processing charge for an open access article is covered by an open access fee, which by default will be for publishing under a CC BY-NC license. Since fees may vary for specific journals, please check the individual journal pages for details. The fee to publish under a CC BY  license, as mandated by certain funding agencies, is generally higher than the CC BY-NC license. Invited content may be exempt from payment; please check the author guidelines. 

Payment of open access fee
If your manuscript is accepted, you will be directed to complete the payment form in which you should choose the preferred method of payment and indicate which open access license you prefer. Upon receipt of your completed form, you will receive the invoice by email. Payment can usually be made by credit card or bank transfer and should be done as soon as possible to avoid delay in the publication process. Before you make a payment, check to see if you are eligible to have your fee covered by one of our institutional agreements.

Open access fee refund policy
If, before publication, we have reasonable grounds to decide that the article should not be published, the open access fee will be refunded. If the article has been published and IOS Press has reasonable grounds to retract or remove the article from our website, we will be under no obligation to refund the open access fee.

white background and three swirls of blue dots

FUNDING AGENCY COMPLIANCE

A growing number of funding agencies now require that research articles they fund must be published as open access. This may be either by mandating deposit in repositories after an embargo period or by stipulating that research is published as open access.

Publishing in any of our journals complies with all major funding agency requirements. Authors may self-archive and post the final manuscript version on their own personal website, or that of their institution, company, or funding agency, and/or in an online repository. Authors who are funded by the NIH, Research Councils UK (RCUK) and Wellcome Trust are welcome to deposit their final manuscript version to PubMed Central and Europe PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance.

We comply fully with the open access requirements of UKRI, Wellcome, and NIHR. All authors retain the right to distribute their author accepted manuscript (AAM), such as via an institutional and/or subject repository (e.g. EuropePMC), under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence for release no later than the date of first online publication.

In all cases the journal’s title, article reference (or DOI), and URL to the journal’s website must be provided on the first page of the manuscript. If authors opt for open access and publish in a journal that is included in PubMedCentral, we will deposit the final published version of the article into PubMedCentral on behalf of the authors.

OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS

We currently have 20 fully open access journals:

*Indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). For a complete overview of abstracting and indexing coverage, please refer to the A&I section on individual journal pages.

SELF-ARCHIVING: You are permitted to deposit all versions of your open access paper on a personal website and/or that of your institution, company, or funding agency, and/or in an online repository; this relates to the preprint, author's accepted manuscript, and the published article (version of record). See more information about this in our article sharing policy.

If you are a journal author from low-income country, please read information about accessing our publishing services here.

Books

Open Library options are also available for books. For more information, please get in touch with the books department with the full details of your inquiry via this contact form. If you would like to view all our open access ebooks, go here.

Get in Touch View Open Access Books

More in Open Science

Jump to other sections to discover more about open science options.
Open Science Open Access Licenses Open Access Institutional Deals Open Data Open References