Decision-making made easier
Given the speed of innovation in scholarly communications, there are a wide variety of open access choices available to researchers. If you are in the process of trying to assess your open access options, you can save considerable time and energy by learning the following terms.
Gold versus Green Open Access FAQs
What is the difference between green and gold open access?
Green OA: an institution, author, or index collects and provides access to the pre-published version(s) of an article
Gold OA: the author pays to make the publisher version of an article publicly accessible
Which version of the paper is available to the public?
Green OA: Draft or Final Version
Gold OA: Publisher Version
When is the paper made available to the public?
Green OA: Immediately, or after an embargo period, normally between 6 months and 2 years.
Gold OA: Immediately after publication
Where is the paper made available?
Green: Typically through author upload to institutional repositories or personal webpages, or by indexing by subject repositories like arXiv and PubMed.
Gold: Publisher's website
Terminology
Article Processing Charges (APCs): Gold Open Access journals require APCs to cover costs related to preparing accepted manuscripts for publication, which would traditionally be recouped through subscription fees. Legitimate journals will always ask for payment after acceptance, and their fees are transparent.
Pre-print / submitted manuscript: a paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed, such as a working paper or your first submission to a journal.
Post-print / accepted manuscript: a paper that has passed peer-review, with revisions made by the author, but has not been copyedited, and does not bear pagination or identifying information from the journal.
Publisher’s version / PDF: a paper after peer-review, typesetting, copyediting, and formatting, i.e. the published paper in print or PDF.
Publishers sometimes use unique terms to refer to the access rights of individual journals and articles. As of July 2018, the terms in accepted use by publishers include:
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Green |
Gold |
Gold in a hybrid journal |
|
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Reed-Elsevier |
Green Open Access |
Gold Open Access |
Hybrid, Gold Open Access |
|
Taylor & Francis |
Green Open Access |
Gold Open Access, Routledge Open |
Routledge Open Select |
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Wiley-Blackwell |
Green Open Access |
Open Access, Gold Open Access |
Hybrid Gold Open Access, Online Open |
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Springer-Nature |
Self-Archiving |
SpringerOpen |
Open Choice |
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Sage |
Green Open Access |
Sage Pure Gold Open Access |
SAGE Choice |
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American Chemical Society |
ACS Articles on Request |
Open Access |
ACS AuthorChoice |