Understanding a journal policy

Policy records contain information on how articles can be made open access for the published, accepted and submitted versions of an article.

Publisher journal policies are stored as a set of options under the article version, with each option presenting a separate way in which an article version can become open access.

Authors and library staff can refer to these options to understand how to make an article open access.

Understanding options

Each version of an article contains one or more options through which the article can be made open access, which can depend on factors such as funders, publisher requirements, or the availability of the article.

Each option is labelled with the article version that it applies to and summary text describing the pathway e.g. Option with associated OA fees, no embargo & CC BY licence.

Clicking on any option will expand the textbox and display the full details for that option.

Why are there policy URL links for different journals on the journal page?

This is a result of the size of the database we manage. To improve administrative efficiency we set up journal records separately from policy records – so several journals can be attached to the same policy record if they have the same open access policy.

This also means that the same policy URL information will show for each journal attached to the policy. The policy URLs are intended to be used as examples of evidence for where the policy information can be found.