Open Access

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IOS Press is an active participant in open access publishing initiatives and is closely following and responding to developing trends, funder and institutional mandates, and scholarly publishing reform. In 2023, we transitioned a number of journals from subscription-based to gold open access and launched new open access titles. This will continue in 2024 and beyond.

Journals

Authors begin their publishing journey with us by choosing whether to publish in a subscription-based journal or under an open access license. In order to publish open access, an article processing charge (APC) will cover the open access fee. If publishing in a hybrid journal (see below) that carries a publication fee, authors are required to pay the publication fee as well as the open access fee. Authors will be updated about this throughout the submission process.

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OPEN ACCESS MODELS

We accommodate the primary open access models:

Hybrid: Hybrid journals enable authors to choose to publish their individual article as open access within a subscription-based journal. Therefore, the journal is a mixture of open access and closed articles. Authors (or research sponsors) are required to pay an open access fee for the appropriate Creative Commons (CC BY) license.

Gold: In the gold open access model, the publisher makes all articles and related content immediately available for free in perpetuity on the journal’s full text platform. In such publications, articles are licensed for sharing and reuse via Creative Commons (CC BY) licenses.

Subscribe-to-Open (S2O): This is an alternative sustainable subscription model at the journal rather than article level 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. If sufficient threshold subscription revenue (as determined by the publisher) is generated from existing and new subscribers, that entire year's content is published open access, available to all readers globally. Authors are not required to pay APCs.

Green: Self-archiving by authors is permitted under the green open access model, often following an embargo period. 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 an independent central open repository, where people can download the work without paying. This model is free for the author. Refer to our article sharing policy for more information.

Diamond or Platinum: Diamond, also known as Platinum, open access journals are fully open access without charging the authors any Article Publishing Charge (APC), so they are completely free to readers and authors. These journals are supported by funding from external sources such as government grants, scholarly societies, academic institutions, libraries, museums, philanthropic organizations, and advertising sales.

IOS PRESS OPEN LIBRARY

The IOS Press Open Library is the program through which authors have the option to publish their articles with full open access in any of our journals.

These articles are published under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license so that readers can freely view, download, distribute, and reuse content with appropriate attribution. 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 journals in which they are published.

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MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION

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 paywall and available via subscription (either individual or institutional) or article purchase – or opt for an open access 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.

OPEN ACCESS FEES

The article processing charge (APC) for an open access article is covered by an open access fee, which by default will be for publication 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 for specific journals.

Payment of open access fee

If your manuscript is accepted, you will be directed to complete the payment form. Here you should select your preferred method of payment and indicate which open access license you prefer. Upon receipt of your completed form, you will receive an 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 full text platform, we will be under no obligation to refund the open access fee.

Waiver policy

Across most of our journals, we offer the possibility of a publication fee waiver for corresponding authors from countries with low-income economies. The eligible countries are defined by the Research4Life program. More information is posted here.

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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 National Institutes of Health, Research Councils UK (RCUK) and Wellcome Trust and a selection of other funding agencies may deposit their final manuscript version to PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance.

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 in PubMedCentral on behalf of the authors. Authors may also request that we submit their final published paper for inclusion in PMC even if the journal is not fully indexed in PMC.

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) license for release no later than the date of first online publication.

When posting a manuscript, in all cases the journal’s title, article reference (or DOI), and URL linking to the journal’s full text platform must be provided on the first page of the manuscript.

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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.

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.

More in Open Science

Jump to other sections to discover more about open science options.