Open access publishing: models, licences, copyright and visibility

Open access publishing means making scholarly articles available online to everyone without reader fees or subscriptions, and stating the terms of reuse in an open licence. A journal's open access policy should spell out which model it follows, which Creative Commons licence applies to its articles, whether copyright stays with the author or the journal, how articles are archived and which standard metadata makes them discoverable.

What is open access, and what does it give a journal?

Open access is a publishing approach that aims to remove the price and permission barriers to reading scholarly work. Readers can read and download articles free of charge and, to the extent the licence allows, share, copy or reuse them in new work.

For a journal, the clearest gain is reach. An article that sits behind no paywall is easier for researchers, students, practitioners and the public to find and read. This especially helps regional or specialist journals reach a wider readership.

Open access is also an important consideration for authors. Many research funders and institutions expect the work they support to be published open access. A journal that meets this expectation becomes more attractive for high-quality submissions.

Open access is more than publishing articles for free. Stating in a licence how readers may use an article, making sure the author agreement is consistent with that licence and archiving articles so they will not be lost in the long term are all part of an open access policy. If any of these is missing, a journal may struggle to meet the expectations of indexes and authors.

What are the open access models?

Open access is not a single model; different labels are used depending on where an article becomes open, who bears the cost and on what terms. These labels are widely used classifications rather than formal definitions, but they give a shared vocabulary for describing a journal's policy.

• In gold open access, an article is open to all as soon as the journal publishes it; at some journals, costs are covered by an article processing charge paid by the author or their institution.
• In diamond or platinum open access, neither readers nor authors pay; costs are usually borne by an institution, society or university.
• In green open access, a version of the article is made open by the author depositing it in an institutional or subject repository.
• In the hybrid model, a subscription journal makes individual articles open access in return for a fee.
• In what is called bronze access, an article can be read free of charge on the publisher's site but carries no open reuse licence.

Many academic journals published by universities and societies operate close to the diamond model. Whichever model is chosen, it should be stated clearly on the journal website and communicated to authors before submission; where a fee is charged, transparency about the amount and what it covers is essential for trust.

As open access has spread, so-called predatory journals have also emerged, publishing for a fee without a genuine peer review process. That is why openly showing its fee policy, review process and editorial board is a basic condition for a legitimate open access journal to earn authors' trust.

How do you choose a Creative Commons licence?

Creative Commons licences express, in a standard and widely understood way, which uses the rights holder permits in advance. The licences combine a few basic conditions: attribution, non-commercial use, no derivatives and share-alike for derivative works. The current version is known as 4.0.

• CC BY allows any use, adaptation and commercial use, provided attribution is given.
• CC BY-SA allows use on condition of attribution and that derivatives are shared under the same licence.
• CC BY-NC allows use with attribution, but only for non-commercial purposes.
• CC BY-NC-SA requires both non-commercial use and that derivatives are shared under the same licence.
• CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND allow sharing only without changes; the latter also excludes commercial use.
• CC0 is not a licence but a dedication placing the work in the public domain as far as possible.

The licence most commonly chosen by scholarly journals is CC BY, because it allows the widest reuse of knowledge. Journals that want to restrict commercial use may choose CC BY-NC. Whichever licence is chosen, it should be stated clearly and consistently on each article page, in the PDF and in the metadata.

When choosing a licence, also pay attention to material taken from other sources within the article. A figure or table used with permission may be subject to different terms from the article's overall licence. Noting the source and terms of use beneath such material prevents readers from reusing it without permission by mistake.

Open access is not just making an article free; it is stating clearly, for everyone, how it may be used.

Copyright transfer or licence to publish?

In traditional publishing, authors often transfer copyright to the journal. In open access journals, the common trend is for authors to keep copyright and grant the journal a licence to publish and distribute the work. This approach also fits more naturally with publishing the article under a Creative Commons licence.

What matters is that the author agreement does not contradict the licence announced on the website. If a journal says it publishes under CC BY but asks authors to sign a form transferring all rights and restricting use, readers and indexes are left with uncertainty.

In practice, this is usually handled through an author declaration or publishing agreement accepted at submission. It is advisable for the declaration to be written in plain language, to show clearly which licence will apply and, for multi-author articles, to state that the corresponding author consents on behalf of the co-authors.

Copyright law varies from country to country and can change over time. When drafting the author agreement, a journal should check current legislation against official sources and seek legal advice where needed. The information in this article offers a general framework and is not a substitute for legal advice.

How do you write an archiving and self-archiving policy?

Open access makes an article available today; archiving keeps it available years from now. Because a journal's own server or service provider may change one day, articles should be preserved in more than one place. Institutional repositories, national library arrangements and distributed preservation networks built for long-term storage are used for this purpose.

A self-archiving policy states which version of an article authors may share, where and when. Permissions should be defined separately for the preprint, the accepted manuscript after peer review and the final published version. Open access journals commonly allow the published version to be shared under the terms of its licence.

Another side of archiving is the journal's own history. Digitising back issues, giving every article a persistent identifier and keeping issue details in order make the journal's entire publishing record visible.

How can open access journals increase their visibility?

Being open does not mean an article will be found. Visibility depends on search engines, academic search tools and indexes reading the article correctly. The foundation is clean, standard metadata: title, authors, affiliations, abstract, keywords, publication date, volume and issue, and licence.

For articles published in Turkish, adding an English title, abstract and keywords to the metadata makes them easier to find in international searches. Writing author and institution names the same way in every issue also prevents fragmented search results.

• Registering a DOI for every article through Crossref gives it a persistent, citable address.
• Authors' ORCID iDs prevent researchers with the same name from being confused.
• Google Scholar meta tags and schema.org data on article pages help the article appear correctly in academic search.
• Exports that follow standards and formats for DOAJ, PubMed and JATS make it easier to apply to indexes and transfer data.
• A sitemap and RSS feed help new issues and articles to be discovered quickly.
• Offering citation styles and BibTeX or RIS files on the article page makes the article easier to cite.

Index acceptance criteria can change over time. Before applying to an index such as DOAJ, check its current criteria on its own website and make sure licence, copyright and archiving information is complete on the journal site.

Frequently asked questions

Does an open access journal have to charge authors?

No. Many open access journals charge neither readers nor authors, with the publishing institution covering costs. Journals that do charge are expected to announce the amount and what it covers clearly before submission.

Can a journal change its licence later?

A journal can change the licence for new articles, but articles already published stay under the licence they were published with. The date from which the change applies should be stated clearly on the website.

Can authors share their article on their own website?

That depends on the journal's self-archiving policy and the article's licence. Articles published under an open licence can usually be shared on the author's own website and in an institutional repository, as long as the licence terms are followed.

Does open access mean weaker peer review?

No. Open access concerns how an article is distributed, not the quality of its peer review. A trustworthy open access journal publishes its review process, editorial board and publication ethics principles openly.

Where should you start when writing an open access policy?

The best starting point is to answer five questions on a single page: which model the journal follows, which licence it uses, who holds copyright, which version authors may share and where, and how articles are archived. When those answers appear consistently on the journal website, in the author guidelines and in every article's metadata, the policy is genuinely in practice.

The infrastructure that carries the policy consistently into every article matters as much as the policy itself. Nova JournalPort, which we build at Bir Web Ajans, lets journals manage Crossref, DOAJ, PubMed and JATS exports along with Google Scholar and schema.org metadata in a single publishing flow on their own domains.