What is open access?

Open access publishing makes articles published in a journal immediately and permanently available online. Unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium is permitted, provided the article is properly cited.

Open access has gained tremendous support from both authors, who appreciate the increased visibility of their articles, as well as science institutions and funders, who value the societal impact of freely available research results.

What are the benefits of publishing in an open access journal?

• Freely available articles
  Research published in open access journals are freely available online to anyone, which maximizes the visibility, and thus the uptake and use of articles.
• Authors retain copyright
  Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License and can be reused and redistributed as long as they are correctly attributed.
• High quality and rigorous peer review
  Open access journals run through a thorough electronic peer-review process the same way traditional journals do.
• Rapid publication
  An easy to use online submission and efficient production process enable the immediate publication on acceptance.
• Compliance with funders' open access mandates
  Articles can comply with open access mandates in the fastest and easiest way. Final articles can be deposited into bibliographic databases and institutional repositories without any embargo periods.
• Citation tracking and inclusion in bibliographic databases
  Open access journals can be tracked for impact factors and included in bibliographic databases just as traditional journals.

How does the business side of open access work?

Open access journals operate under a reversed business model to traditional journals. Instead of charging users a fee to read the content, they levy an article-processing charge (APC) at the beginning of the process and this enables all the research in the journal to be made freely available. The author who submits the manuscript is responsible for making or arranging the payment. Usually the authors do not have to pay the fee themselves but can rely on the institutions and funders, who take on the involved fees in various ways:

• By establishing a central open access fund (e.g. Harvard University)
• By making open access fees part of their general funding (e.g. National Institutes of Health, US)
• By paying open access fees as part of a membership model (e.g. Max Planck Society)