Open Access

Author Rights

When you write a paper, you automatically own the copyright to your work unless and until you explicitly transfer your copyright to another party through a written agreement. Your copyright is really a bundle of rights that includes exclusive rights to your work, including:

• Reproduction
• Distribution
• Public performance
• Public display
• Creation of derivate works

When your article is reviewed and accepted for publication in a journal, you will be asked to sign an agreement to allow the journal to publish your work. Many journals use copyright transfer agreements as their standard publication agreement. If you sign a copyright transfer agreement with a publisher, you transfer your copyright to the publisher. Unless the agreement includes provisions allowing you to retain some of your rights, you may no longer have the right to place your work on websites or researcher profile pages (e.g. ResearchGate, Academia.edu), use your work in teaching your courses, reuse the work in subsequent works, or deposit the work in an online digital archive.

When you publish your paper, it's important to think about the rights you wish to retain. Transferring your copyright does not have to be an all or nothing affair, and some publishers are willing to negotiate which rights are transferred and which you may retain.

There are three different types of Open Access:

1. Open Access self-archiving -- authors publish in a subscription journal, but also make their articles freely accessible online, either by placing them in an institutional repository or in a central repository such as PubMed Central.
2. Open Access publishing -- authors publish in open access journals that make their articles freely accessible online immediately upon publication. Open access journals conduct peer review and allow authors to retain their copyright. These journals sometimes meet their expenses by charging the author a publication fee. Examples of OA publishers are BioMed Central and Public Library of Science (PLoS). There are currently more than 21,252 (13,660 without fees) OA publications listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals as of December 2024.
3. Hybrid Open Access -- Some traditional, subscription-based publishers have introduced a "hybrid open access" concept. In this model, the publisher will make an article immediately available to the public if the author pays an additional open-access fee. Frequently referred to as an "open choice" or "paid access" charge, these fees can range from $500-$3,100 per article. Publishers participating in this model include Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley.