Glossary

An article processing charge (APC) is the charge that’s paid to the publisher to allow for an article to be made freely accessible upon publication. With the APC, the cost of accessing an article is moved from the reader (via traditional subscriptions and paywalls) to the author.

If you want to learn more about APCs, watch our webinar “What’s Up with APCs and How Do I Deal with Them?”

Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is the final author-created version of an article that includes any changes made after peer review and which has been accepted for publication by the journal. The work has not yet been reviewed in terms of copyediting, typesetting, and layout.

Bronze OA refers to articles that are made free-to-read on the publisher’s website without a specific open license – this also means that without a license, the rights to make the article OA are with the publisher.

CC BY allows someone to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the original work, also for commercial purposes. Credit must be given to the creator. This license is considered the most accommodating of all licenses.

CC BY-NC allows someone to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the original work, but only for non-commercial purposes. Although used non-commercially, the moderated work doesn’t have to be licensed under the same terms as the original work. Credit must be given to the creator.

CC BY-NC-ND allows someone to copy and redistribute the original work, but only for non-commercial purposes. Also, if the person moderates, remixes, transforms, or builds upon the original material, it can’t be shared with or distributed to others. Credit must be given to the creator.

CC BY-NC-SA allows someone to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, build upon the original work, but only for non-commercial purposes. If the person moderates, remixes, transforms, or builds upon the original material, they must ensure to license their new creations under the same terms as the original. Credit must be given to the creator.

CC BY-ND allows someone to copy and redistribute the work for any purpose, also commercially. However, if the person moderates, remixes, transforms, or builds upon the original material, it can’t be shared with or distributed to others. Credit must be given to the creator.

CC BY-SA allows someone to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the original work, also for commercial purposes. If someone moderates the work, they must ensure to license their new creations under the same terms as the original. Credit must be given to the creator.

CC: Creative Commons
BY: Attribution
SA: Share-Alike
NC: Non-Commercial
ND: Non-Derivatives

Closed access means publishing in journals that cover publishing costs through access tolls, for instance, subscriptions, site licenses, or pay-per-view charges.

Color charge is an additional fee that covers all expenses related to color-based figures, text, or the like that are included in the article.

Copyright is a legal term that refers to the rights a creator has over their own literary work. Copyright ownership protects the original work and gives a person the sole right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the work in question.

Diamond OA is a non-profit publishing model used by non-commercial organizations, associations, or networks. Diamond OA is identical to the gold OA route where the final version of the article is made freely accessible but without charging any APCs. This publishing model doesn’t allow for commercial and for-profit reuse.

An editorial charge is sometimes also referred to as page charge. It’s an additional fee charged when the article exceeds a certain number of pages.

Some publishers only allow green OA after a so-called embargo period. The embargo period refers to the time period between the publication of an article until it’s made freely accessible to the public. During the embargo period, readers must pay a price to obtain access to the publication. An embargo period can span from months to years.

FAIR is an acronym for “findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable” which represents a set of guiding principles intended to define what useful data entails. As such, FAIR data means useful data and is the foundation in making science more open and transparent.

A gold journal, also called a fully OA journal, is a journal that comprises only OA articles that are peer-reviewed and can be accessed online by the public, free of charge.

Gold OA means the final version of an article is published in a complete OA format. The research is released in an online journal immediately after publication and stored in the publisher’s system. To cover the costs of gold OA, the publishers normally charge a one-time fee to the authors or the institution, known as Article Processing Charge (APC).

Green OA is also referred to as self-archiving where the author accepted manuscript (AAM) version is deposited in an online repository that makes it accessible to everyone. Unlike Gold OA, the copyright ownership is usually with the publisher and there are typically restrictions as to how the work can be used. Likewise, there are individual self-archiving policies set by each journal or publisher that decide on specific terms and conditions, for instance, which version of the article may be used and when the article can be made freely accessible in the repository – sometimes an embargo period is set by the publisher.

Want to get your head around the different routes to open access? Our whitepaper “From Research to Publication: A Researcher’s Guide to Open Access” covers green OA, self-archiving, and how the publishing routes fit together. 

A hybrid journal is a journal that includes both OA articles and closed access articles. In this journal, two types of articles coexist: those that are freely accessible upon payment of an APC and those only accessible through paid subscription.

With open access, the publication cost, making the work freely accessible is charged to the author who must provide a one-time payment. That one-time payment is typically known as an article processing charge (APC).

See also ‘Article Processing Charge’.

Open access refers to a publishing model and broad international movement where academic research is made freely available online to the end-user at no costs – that is, where there are no financial, legal, and technical barriers, meaning that anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, etc. within legal agreements as opposed to traditional subscription models in which the reader pays a fee to obtain access to scholarly information.

Curious why open access matters and who it benefits? Watch our webinar: “Why Should I Care About Open Access?”

An open access fund (OAF) is a fund that’s set aside by an institution to help cover APCs for authors who lack other funding. Ultimately, the goal of the Open Access Fund is to support the OA publication models that enable free and immediate access to research outputs. 

Open access management is a term that covers a range of processes organizations use to oversee their open access publishing output. These can include: compliance with funder or national open access policies, monitoring publishing agreements, depositing research in a repository, or managing funding to support researchers publishing open access. 

Want to get on top of your OA management? Our booklet “How To Optimize OA Management” walks through agreements, deposits, and reporting. 

Open government is a license published by the UK government. It’s compatible with the CC-BY license and allows someone to copy, publish, distribute, and adapt the original work, both commercially and non-commercially.

Open science represents a movement within scientific research that strives to create greater openness and transparency. The idea behind Open science is to remove all barriers at any stage of the research process and allow for unhindered access to all information, data, and outputs in the entire research cycle. 

Plan S is an OA initiative, launched in 2018 by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders. Its founding aim was to ensure that peer-reviewed scientific articles emerging from research funded by participating organizations were made openly available immediately without paywalls or embargoes. As of November 2025, cOAlition S has adopted a new strategy that broadens its focus to support a wider range of publishing options.  

Not sure whether a journal is Plan S compliant? ChronosHub’s Journal Guide flags compliance against 140+ funders, including Plan S, so authors can check at a glance. 

The principal investigator (PI) is the person responsible for the preparation, administration, and reporting of a research grant. Likewise, the PI is also responsible for overseeing compliance, finance, or any other aspects related to the research project.

Public domain is a specific license where the work can be used freely by anyone for any purpose and without any copyright restrictions. Therefore, a public domain license is considered the clearest form of OA as no one has ownership of the work.

See ‘Read and Publish agreement’.

A purchase order (PO) is a source document that’s issued from a buyer to a supplier. It comprises requested information on the sale of products and services, including specific pricing and other essential order details. The aim of a purchase order is to create clarity and visibility of business transactions.

A Read and Publish agreement (also referred to as a transformative, transitional, or Publish & Read agreement) is a term covering the contract that’s negotiated between institutions (libraries, national, and regional consortia) and publishers. The contract aims to reshape the business model, shifting away from traditional subscription models of paid to read and transitioning toward reducing the cost to access the content of the journal. Thus, in a nutshell, open access is a key objective for negotiating read and publish agreements.

Wondering what these agreements actually cover? Our webinar “What Do Open Access Agreements Entail?” walks through read and publish and the other main agreement types.

The Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) is an approach developed by cOAlition S that lets authors keep enough rights over their own work to make a version openly available in whatever journal they publish in, while staying compliant with Plan S. The wider practice of rights retention has since spread beyond cOAlition S, with many universities adopting their own institutional rights-retention policies (notably in the UK, driven by the REF 2029 open access policy).

Some publishers and journals charge a submission fee upon submission of a manuscript to help fund editorial and peer review administration. The submission fee is separate from the article processing charge (APC), which is paid to make an article freely accessible upon publication.

Supplementary charge is an additional fee that covers any supplementary materials accompanying an accepted article. Supplementary materials may be used for supporting data sets, figures and tables, etc.

See ‘Read and Publish agreement’.

See ‘Read and Publish agreement’.

VoR refers to the final published version of an article, including any editorial improvements made after the peer review is completed.