Gold open access is a way of publishing in open peer-reviewed journals. Access to full texts is provided by the publisher, not the author.
To publish via gold open access, following steps need to be taken.
Currently, there are thousands of open access journals in various fields and areas. But apart from the specialization, these magazines also differ in their chosen business model. There are three basic models of open access journals:
Pure/diamond open access journals – Full content of the journal is openly accessible while publishing-related costs are borne by the publisher (e.g. a university publishing house, scientific community). Example: Global Health Research and Policy or European Commission’s publishing platform Open Research Europe
Paid open access journals – Full content of the journal is openly available while publishing costs of the article are borne by the authors – they pay a publication fee; this type of journals is often mistaken for the entire gold open access model. Example: PLoS ONE or Occupational Therapy International
Hybrid journals – The journal is available to subscribers by default, only selected articles are available in open access for a publication fee. Example: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A
Journals of which content is available free of charge after the expiration of the embargo are not considered to be open access – they do not meet the condition of immediate access.
You can use the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) database to find a suitable open journal to publish your article or to search for relevant literature.
For new / unknown titles, we strongly advise you to check whether it is a predatory journal.
Publication fees/article processing charges (APC) are associated with a paid open access journal model and hybrid journals. The fee varies from title to title; field differences are also significant.
APCs can be covered from a grant or a research project budget (costs of open publishing for the duration of the grant are eligible for example in H2020, ERC, Czech Ministery of Education etc.), or from workplace resources (if funds have been set aside for this purpose).
Corresponding authors of the UK can also use discounts or tokens for open access publishing with selected publishers. More information below.
Discounts and tokens for open access publishing are part of the so-called Read & Publish agreements, which are concluded within the national consortium CzechELib.
The discount or token for open access publishing can only be used by authors of the CU who are corresponding authors of the given articles (for proper recognition by the system, we recommend using an institutional e-mail address for communication with the journal) and who have listed the CU as their primary affiliation.
One token covers the open access publication fee (Article Processing Charge, APC) for one article.
It is possible to apply for a token only after the article has been accepted by the publisher, tokens cannot be reserved in advance.
For publishers where the number of tokens per year is limited (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley) all the following conditions must be met in addition *):
the article will be published and reported in the RIV results under the affiliation of Charles University,
the article will be published only in journals that are in the Q1 or Q2 quartiles according to the Article Influence Score (AIS), which can be found in the Web of Science database; if the journal is not included in the Web of Science database (specifically Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded), but is included in the Scopus database, the current value of its Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) metric which can be found in the Scopus database or on the CWTS Journal Indicators website, must rank in quartiles Q1 or Q2 according to SNIP, i.e. be ≥ 0.712,
the article does not have APC (Article Processing Charge) financing from other sources, e.g. from a grant or other resources of the workplace.
Once all tokens have been used up at a given year, it will no longer be possible to use any (not even when meeting the above conditions).
The number of remaining tokens is available on our website (updated as of 05.04.2024):
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins - 2
Springer – 88
Taylor & Francis - 28
Wiley – 91
In case of questions, do not hesitate to contact us at .
*) This is the decision of the Rector's Board from 18/12/2023, which was made based on the evaluation of the open access tokens allocation workflow during the year 2023, when the tokens were used up before the end of the year.
ACS | AIP | ACM | CUP | IOPscience | Karger | LWW | OUP | RSC | SAGE | SCOAP3 | Springer Nature | Taylor & Francis | Wiley
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to take advantage of the complete waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in hybrid journals.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of MFF UK have the opportunity to take advantage of the complete waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in the following hybrid journals:
American Journal of Physics
Applied Physics Letters
Biointerphases
Chaos
Journal of Applied Physics
Journal of Mathematical Physics
Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data
Journal of Rheology
Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A
Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B
Physics of Fluids
Physics of Plasmas
Review of Scientific Instruments
Surface Science Spectra
The Journal of Chemical Physics
The Physics Teacher
In 2023, Charles University can use a total of 18 tokens to waive the payment of the publication fee.
This opportunity can only be used for the following types of publications: Brief Communication, Communication, Conference Article, Fast Track or Article-FT, Letter, Note, Perspective, Article, Research Update, Review, Roadmap, Tutorial.
To use this opportunity, the corresponding author must choose Charles University as affiliation and choose the option "Open Access as part of an Institutional agreement" in the Publication Charges and Funding step during submission.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to take advantage of the complete waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in all journals.
This option can only be used in selected types of publications: research articles, review articles, conference papers or proceedings papers and other types of articles for which ACM would also require payment of the APC fee in the case of an unconcluded transformation agreement.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to take advantage of the complete waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in all journals.
This option can be used only for following types of publications: research article, review, brief report, case report and rapid communications article.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to use the full waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in all journals with a few exceptions (list of excluded journals).
This option can be used only for selected types of publications: paper, special issue paper, review and/or letter.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to use the full waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in all journals.
This option can only be used for selected types of publications: Original Paper, Review, Brief Communication, Correction.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University (2.LF, 3.LF, LFHK, LFP) have the opportunity to use the full waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in Lippincott Williams & Wilkins/Wolters Kluwer Health hybrid journals.
Tokens can only be used for selected types of publications: research papers, review.
Charles University has been allocated a total of 5 of these tokens for its authors for the period 2023-2025 (as of 1 January 2024, 3 tokens remain). In order to use the tokens, it is necessary to fulfill the additional conditions listed above
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to use the full waiver of the Open Access publication fee (APC) in all journals with the following exceptions (the following journals are not eligible):
Astronomy & Geophysics
Children & Schools
Critical Values
European Heart Journal Supplements
Health and Social Work
Holocaust And Genocide Studies
Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery
Itnow
JNCI Monographs
Journal of American History
Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
Journal Of The ICRU
Music Theory Spectrum
OAH Magazine of History
Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics
Reports of Patent, Design and Trade Mark Cases
Shakespeare Quarterly
Social Work
Social Work Research
The American Historical Review
The Library
The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory
The Year’s Work in English Studies
Translational Animal Science
Western Historical Quarterly
This option can be used only for following types of publications: research article, review article, brief report, case report.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to benefit from a full waiver of the APC publication fee in hybrid and fully open journals published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University can benefit from a discount on the APC fee (the discounted fee will be £200) in hybrid journals of the HSS Package collection and a 20% discount on APCs in fully OA journals in the HSS Package collection (you can check which journals are part of the collection HSS Package here). The remaining amount of the APC must be paid from other sources.
These discounts can be used only for following types of publications: Original Research Papers, Review Papers, Brief Communications, Short Reports, Case Reports
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
SCOAP3 is an international consortium of libraries and research centers in the field of particle physics operating under the auspices of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Thanks to the involvement of Charles University, CU authors can publish articles in the field of particle physics in selected scientific peer-reviewed journals free of charge.
All SCOAP3-funded articles are made available on the publishers' platforms and in the SCOAP3 repository after publication.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to use tokens for publishing in open access in all hybrid journals.
Charles University will have allocated a total of about 99 of these tokens for its authors for the year 2024. In order to use the tokens, it is necessary to fulfill the additional conditions listed above.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to use tokens for publishing in open access in all hybrid journals.
Tokens can only be used for selected types of publications: Article, Review, Research Article, Review Article, Report, Short Communication, Original Article.
Charles University will have allocated a total of about 39 of these tokens for its authors for the year 2024. In order to use the tokens, it is necessary to fulfill the additional conditions listed above.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
Corresponding authors of Charles University have the opportunity to take advantage of the full waiver of the APC publication fee in all hybrid journals.
Charles University will have allocated a total of about 113 of these tokens for its authors for the year 2024. In order to use the tokens, it is necessary to fulfill the additional conditions listed above.
More information can be found on the CzechELib website.
MDPI: As of November 30, 2022, Charles University ended its membership in the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), so CU authors are no longer entitled to the discount that this membership brought.
If you have chosen a suitable open access journal (having verified its quality and in the case of a paid model you have the resources to cover the publication fees), submit a preprint of your article to the editor.
Once the article is peer reviewed and published, the author no longer has to worry about ensuring open access. In the case of gold open access, the publisher provides it directly on their site.
To ensure that your article is fully open, we recommend publishing it under a public license. The most common public licenses used not only for scientific articles are internationally known Creative Commons (CC) licenses.
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E-mail: openscience@cuni.cz
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