What Is Open Access?

Open access (OA) is a publishing model whereby scholarly journals, articles, and books are published online with no access restrictions immediately upon publication, and with limited or no restrictions on reuse of the material. Authors retain copyright to their work under an OA license.

Open access is achieved through three primary approaches:

1. Green open access: This OA approach is achieved through sharing a version of a scholarly article manuscript on an open platform. Green OA strategies do not require payment of an author-facing fee. Examples include:
   • Preprints. Sharing your manuscript before it undergoes peer review on a preprint server is not only allowed by many journals, it's encouraged by some. And funders like the NIH allow you to cite preprints in progress reports. Find out who allows preprinting and where to find preprints.
   • Self-archiving, or sharing the author accepted manuscript (AAM) in an open access repository is allowed immediately upon publication by the University of California's Open Access Policies. Many funders such as the NIH and the state of California have public access policies which allow the AAM to be used to make the full text of articles publicly accessible in PubMed Central or the designated repository. 
2. Gold open access: When the version of record (VOR) for articles and books is published open access on the publisher's website with a fee, this is considered gold OA. A transactional publication fee - commonly called article processing charge (APC) or book processing charge (BPC) - is charged to cover the publisher's costs and to make the publication free for all to access.
   
   Journals may publish only OA content (fully OA) or a mix of subscription and OA articles (hybrid OA). The submission and peer review process is the same for OA articles as for subscription articles. Authors should beware of deceptive publishers and ensure that the journals they submit to are trusted and indexed in reputable sources. See our guide, Steps to Finding the Right Journal.
   
   UC has agreements with over 15 publishers that discount or help authors pay APCs and BPCs. The UC libraries also invest in several book publishers to help support open monograph publishing.
3. Diamond open access is when the VOR is published on the publisher's website but there is no transactional, author-facing fee. The platform or publication costs are borne by either an institution, society, funder, or other entity. Diamond OA examples with UC libraries support include:
   • Subscribe to Open (S2O) publishers like Annual Reviews and International Water Association Publishing open content one year at a time once they receive sufficient subscription payments.
   • Open Library of Humanities publishes APC-free humanities journals, supported by member institutions.
   • MIT's Direct to Open, in place since 2022, publishes each year's books open access with the help of annual library participation fees. 

See a graphical representation of the pathways to open access for scholarly articles, or a text-only version. Find out more about the university’s efforts to advance the transition to open access.