Making an article ‘open access’ means making some version of that article free for anyone to access and read.

You may have heard of two different models for making articles open access: ‘Gold’ and ‘Green’. Gold Open Access refers to cases where the final ‘Version of Record’ of an article is immediately made freely available, under a permissive licence that often includes additional re-use rights. Green Open Access refers to cases where an earlier version of a manuscript is made available via an online repository, following an embargo period – this is also sometimes referred to as self-archiving.

When your article is accepted for publication in one of our Hybrid journals, you will receive an email which will offer you the option to publish your article Gold Open Access.  If you choose not to take the Gold OA option, you may make an earlier version of your manuscript available in online repositories, in accordance with the journal’s Green OA policy. 

Yes, this option is available. Please contact the journal’s Editorial office if you would like to make a previously published article Gold OA.

No. All submitted manuscripts are peer reviewed and processed to the same high standard. Only after your article has been accepted will you be given the option to make your article Gold OA. Choosing Gold OA will not affect the outcome of the peer review process.

Each Gold OA article is clearly labelled with an open access symbol in the online table of contents for each issue of the journal. On the journal website readers can also navigate to a list of open access articles.

The embargo period for most STM journals we publish is 6 months. This is the period following the publication of an article, after which you may make your accepted manuscript available through a public repository. There is no embargo period for most HSS journals we publish. For further information please see our Green OA policy page, where you can download a spreadsheet with full details about which versions of articles authors can post online, and where and when authors can post them.

You can find full details of the Press’s Green Open Access policy for journals on our Green OA policy page.

In most cases Gold Open Access publications are supported by an author’s institution via an open access publishing agreement directly with Cambridge. In other cases it may be supported by an article processing charge (APC), typically paid by the author’s funding body or institution. This fee covers costs such as copyediting, typesetting and online hosting. Cambridge offers multiple other funding options to support Gold OA for which you may be eligible.

You can download our full list of APCs from our Gold OA page for journals.

Once you have indicated that you would like your article to be published under the Gold OA model, you will be contacted by CCC-RightsLink, who will collect the APC on our behalf. Please follow their instructions to avoid any delay to the publication of your article. 

We do refund APCs if we have not met our promises to you. See our APC refund policy for more information about this and how to request a refund. 

Your article will be freely available as soon as it is published online.

The Version of Record (the final, typeset and copy-edited published article) will be freely available from Cambridge Core.

Cambridge University Press offers the CC Attribution ('CC BY') licence as the default licence for Gold OA articles. Many journals also offer the option for you to publish your work under other Creative Commons licences. To check which licence options a journal offers, please check the “journal information” section of the journal’s home page, and navigate to “journal policies” and “open access options”. Please indicate which licence you would prefer when submitting your publishing agreement. 

This licence allows others to share and adapt your original article. The article may be copied, redistributed and built upon for any purpose, including for commercial use. There is no change to the owner(s) of any copyright in the article, and anyone wishing to copy, distribute and build upon the original article must give appropriate credit to the original article, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.

You can find more general information regarding open access on our open access policies pages, or you can email openresearch@cambridge.org .