Open access policy
We are committed to open science and to serving the needs of molecular bioscientists in the best way possible. In support of this, we offer several open access (OA) options, including funder-compliant routes to publishing, in all our journals.
We have adopted the ALPSP/NISO Recommended Practices for Journal Article Versions (the VoR and AAM). A submitted manuscript that has been peer reviewed and is accepted for publication becomes an Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) at the point of acceptance. A final corrected, formatted and published article becomes the Version of Record (VoR).
Below, our current routes to OA are described.
Gold open access
Selection of OA for a manuscript has no bearing on the editorial decisions or the outcome of peer review. The decision to publish an article is governed entirely by the peer review process and our Editorial Boards. The journals’ Editorial Board and reviewers will not know whether an author has opted to pay for OA. Payment to facilitate OA is only collected if a manuscript has been formally accepted for publication.
Gold OA can currently be achieved in our journals in two ways, as detailed below.
Institutional Read & Publish agreements
To support and accelerate our transition to OA, we offer Read & Publish (R&P) agreements to institutions, combining access to journal content with unlimited, guaranteed OA publishing across all our journals. Articles from corresponding authors based at an institution that have taken up one of our R&P offerings will be automatically published Gold OA by default under a CC BY license, without the need for any article publishing charges.
Article publishing charge (APC)
For those not based at a R&P institution, all of our subscription journals offer authors the choice to pay an article publishing charge (hybrid OA), allowing the final published article (the VoR) to be published OA. This makes the published article freely available online from the journal site and ensures that most types of distribution and re-use will be permitted without restrictions or charges.
We currently publish two fully OA journals, Bioscience Reports and Neuronal Signaling, where authors are charged an APC unless covered by a R&P agreement.
See the full list of APCs for our journal portfolio.
Discounts and waivers
To ensure there are no barriers to publishing in our journals, a range of discounts and waivers are available. View our APC price list to see our discounted rates.
Members of the Biochemical Society receive a discounted APC across all of our titles. For Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, members of the Royal Society of Biology also receive a discounted APC.
As members of the Research4Life initiative, we offer discounts to those countries on the HINARI Group B list and full waivers to those countries on the HINARI Group A list.
APCs are collected on behalf of the Biochemical Society/Portland Press by the Copyright Clearance Center. Any applicable discounts will be automatically applied on the payment screen.
Licensing, copyright and permissions
As fully OA journals, Bioscience Reports and Neuronal Signaling publish all papers under a CC BY licence. In our subscription journals, authors covered by a R&P agreement, or those who pay an APC will publish their article OA under CC BY licence, otherwise articles are published under our standard Licence to Publish. The CC BY licence lets others distribute, revise and build upon the published article, even commercially, as long as they credit the author and original article. This is the most accommodating of all the licences offered and will be compliant with mandates and OA policies of funding bodies. Where a funder OA policy does not require publication under a CC BY licence, authors are offered the protective for their OA articles. This licence allows unrestricted readership of the article while ensuring that commercial use and adaptations cannot be made without permission.
Authors in our journals retain copyright and assign us, as the publisher, an exclusive Licence to Publish. This is the case for all published articles, regardless of whether they are OA or subscription articles. For all OA articles, the Licence to Publish assigned to us by the authors will point to the relevant Creative Commons licence to guide use and re-use terms to the community. More information on copyright and permissions can be found on our Terms page.
Anyone may share the final published VoR of Gold OA articles on any websites, including blogs, personal pages, institutional repositories and subject archives. We encourage individuals to include a link to the published article on the journal page when re-posting, sharing or re-using an article (in whole or in part) elsewhere.
Green open access and archiving
The final published VoR for subscription articles (i.e., those not published Gold OA) may not be shared or posted to institutional repositories, personal webpages, blogs, listservs, ResearchGate or any other websites that are not password protected. Authors are not normally permitted to share the VoR of articles on a website that is open to the public. Please check our policy on the sharing of articles on our Terms page.
We allow deposit of the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in institutional or subject repositories without embargo. As a service to institutions in the UK who have signed up to R&P, we automatically deposit AAMs from corresponding authors into institutional repositories.
Immediate Green deposition is supported as a way for authors to achieve funder and institutional compliance across all our journals.
When archiving an AAM, please:
- Make clear that this is not the final VoR.
- Include a link to the VoR on the journal website.
- Ensure that the journal carrying the final published version of the article is attributed.
