What is open access publishing — and why do so many journals, funders, and universities now insist on it? In simple terms, open access means a published article is free for anyone to read, download, and share, with no subscription and no paywall. This guide explains how open access works, how it differs from traditional subscription publishing, what the Creative Commons licences mean, what an article processing charge (APC) actually pays for, and how fee waivers make publishing possible for authors without a budget.
Under the traditional model, a reader who wants your paper must pay — personally, or through a library subscription. Under open access, the final published version is placed online free of charge for every reader, everywhere, from the day it appears. The research itself is unchanged: the same peer review, the same editorial standards, the same published article. What changes is who can read it and what they may legally do with it.
That second part matters. "Free to read" alone is not the whole of open access. A true open access article is published under an open licence — usually a Creative Commons licence — which spells out the reuse rights readers have. The author keeps copyright and grants readers clear permissions in advance, instead of transferring copyright to the publisher. Our open access policy sets out how this works at Global Academic Publishers.
In subscription publishing, the costs of running a journal are recovered from readers and libraries. The result is the paywall: anyone outside a subscribing institution hits a payment screen, and much publicly funded research ends up readable only by those who can pay for it twice over. Authors also typically sign over copyright, which limits how they can share their own work.
In open access publishing, the costs are covered on the author side or by the publisher and its supporters, so the reader pays nothing. The author retains copyright, the article is available to practitioners, policymakers, students, and fellow researchers worldwide — including those at institutions with no subscription budget — and reuse is governed by the licence rather than by individual permission requests. Neither model makes a journal "good" or "bad" on its own; peer review and editorial integrity decide that. But the access model decides who benefits from the work.
Gold open access means the journal itself publishes the article open access, usually under a Creative Commons licence, often funded by an APC. This is the model used by fully open access journals, including ours.
Green open access means the article appears in a (often subscription) journal, but the author also deposits a version — typically the accepted manuscript — in an institutional or subject repository where it can be read free. Embargo periods and version restrictions commonly apply, and the deposited copy is not the final published version.
Diamond open access (sometimes called platinum) means the journal charges neither readers nor authors. Costs are carried by institutions, societies, or funders. It is an admirable model, but it depends entirely on continuing subsidy, so it is less common than gold.
Hybrid journals are subscription journals that offer an open access option for individual articles, for a fee. Hybrid deserves an honest note: it has been criticised because institutions can end up paying twice — subscriptions plus article fees for the same journal. If you choose a hybrid option, check exactly what your fee buys and which licence you receive.
Every Creative Commons licence lets readers share your work with credit to you. They differ in what else is allowed:
CC BY — anyone may copy, distribute, adapt, and reuse the work, including commercially, as long as they credit you. This is the most open licence and the one most funders prefer or require, because it removes every barrier to reuse in teaching, practice, and further research. It is the licence used for articles at Global Academic Publishers.
CC BY-SA — the same freedoms, but anyone who builds on your work must license their new work under the same terms ("share alike").
CC BY-NC — reuse is allowed for non-commercial purposes only. This sounds protective, but the boundary of "commercial" is often unclear, and it can block legitimate uses such as inclusion in course materials sold by a university press.
CC BY-ND — the work may be shared but not adapted: no translations, no excerpts woven into new works, no modified figures. This is the most restrictive of the four.
CC BY 4.0 — the current version of the CC BY licence — has become the funder-friendly standard because it maximises reach while keeping the one condition that matters to authors: attribution. Wherever your work travels, your name travels with it.
An article processing charge (APC) is a fee, usually payable after acceptance, that covers the cost of publishing one article in an open access journal. It is not a payment for acceptance — in any legitimate journal the editorial decision comes first and is independent of payment — and it is not profit from readers, because readers pay nothing.
What does an APC actually fund? Managing the peer review process (editorial staff, reviewer systems, plagiarism screening), production (copyediting coordination, typesetting, figure and reference formatting), the publishing platform and long-term hosting, registration of the article's DOI so it can be cited and tracked, and the journal's indexing and archiving arrangements. When you see an APC, that is the machinery your fee keeps running so that your article can stay free for everyone else.
Open access would fail its own purpose if only well-funded authors could use it, so most open access publishers operate waiver and discount schemes: full or partial waivers for authors from low-income economies, for early-career researchers without grants, or during a journal's launch period. The key points for authors are simple: ask before or at submission, not after acceptance; explain your situation briefly and honestly; and never let a fee question delay an editorial decision — decisions must be based on the manuscript alone. Our separate explainer walks through how APC waivers in open access journals work, who typically qualifies, and how to apply. At launch, the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences has announced an inaugural fee waiver, as described on the journal's pages — always confirm the current position before you submit.
Many authors no longer choose open access freely — their funder or institution requires it. Major research funders in Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere now mandate that grant-funded publications be openly available, frequently under CC BY, on the reasoning that publicly funded research should be publicly readable. Universities increasingly hold similar policies for their own staff and students. Before you submit anywhere, check three things: your funder's open access policy, your institution's policy, and whether a specific licence (often CC BY) is required. Publishing in a fully open access journal under CC BY 4.0 satisfies the great majority of these mandates by default.
The practical benefit is readership. A paywalled article can only be read by the fraction of the world with subscription access; an open access article can be read by the clinician in a district hospital, the policymaker drafting guidance, the student at an unaffiliated college, and the researcher at a small institution with no library deal. Studies comparing similar articles report that open access work tends to be downloaded more and, in many fields, cited more — though the size of any citation effect varies by discipline and study, and no honest publisher can promise a citation outcome for an individual paper. What can be said plainly is this: removing the paywall removes the first obstacle between your work and the people who might use it.
Global Academic Publishers publishes open access: every article in the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (GJVAS) is free to read on publication and licensed under CC BY 4.0, so authors keep their copyright and readers get the widest lawful reuse with attribution. Manuscripts are assessed through double-blind peer review — reviewers do not know the authors' identities, and authors do not know the reviewers' — so decisions rest on the work itself. GJVAS is in its launch phase and has announced an inaugural fee waiver through the publisher's channels; the journal's ISSN and DOI arrangements are in application, and we state that openly rather than claim what is not yet granted. If your manuscript fits the journal's scope — veterinary medicine, animal health and production, welfare, reproduction, infectious diseases, public health, and One Health — we would be glad to consider it.
Creative Commons licences are built from a small set of conditions, and once you know the four building blocks you can read almost any licence at a glance. BY (Attribution) is present in every Creative Commons licence: anyone who uses the work must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate whether changes were made. SA (ShareAlike) requires adaptations to be shared under the same licence. NC (NonCommercial) permits only non-commercial use. ND (NoDerivatives) permits sharing only in unadapted form. The licence name is simply the combination of those letters, so CC BY-NC-ND means attribution is required, commercial use is not permitted, and no adaptations may be shared.
Two further points are worth checking every time. First, the version number matters: CC BY 4.0 is the current international version, designed to work across jurisdictions without needing a separate national version. An older licence, such as CC BY 3.0, remains valid for works published under it, but new submissions should normally use the current version. Second, a licence is not the same as a waiver of moral rights or a transfer of copyright. Under a Creative Commons licence the author keeps copyright; the licence is a standing permission, granted to the public in advance, that tells readers exactly what they may do without asking first. That is why open access articles can travel so freely: the permission travels with the article.
The table below summarises the licences authors most often meet. It is a guide to the permissions each licence grants, not legal advice; for a specific commercial or translation project, check the licence text itself.
| Licence | May readers share it? | May readers adapt it? | Commercial use? |
|---|---|---|---|
| CC BY 4.0 | Yes, with credit | Yes | Yes |
| CC BY-SA 4.0 | Yes, with credit | Yes, if the adaptation uses the same licence | Yes |
| CC BY-NC 4.0 | Yes, with credit | Yes | No |
| CC BY-ND 4.0 | Yes, with credit | No | Yes, in unadapted form |
| CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | Yes, with credit | No | No |
Choosing between them is a trade-off, and authors should weigh it consciously. CC BY maximises reuse and is the licence most funders ask for, but it also means a commercial publisher could include your article in a for-profit collection, provided you are credited. CC BY-NC blocks that commercial reuse, yet the line between commercial and non-commercial is not always sharp: a university course pack sold at cost, a training manual used by a private veterinary practice, or a figure reused in a sponsored webinar can all sit in a grey area. CC BY-ND protects the integrity of your exact text and figures, but it also prevents translations, abridged teaching versions, and updated adaptations — uses that many authors would welcome. If your funder requires CC BY, that requirement settles the question. If the choice is yours, ask what matters more: maximum reach, control over commercial use, or control over adaptations.
Licence language can feel abstract, so it helps to see how CC BY 4.0 works in situations authors actually encounter. In each case below, the user must credit the original authors, link to the licence, and state whether changes were made; beyond that, no further permission is needed.
A lecturer reuses a figure in teaching slides. A veterinary lecturer preparing a lecture on calf diarrhoea may copy a diagram from a CC BY article into slides, credit the authors beneath the figure, and share the slides with students. No permission email is required, and the lecturer may also adapt the diagram — for example, by adding local labelling — provided the change is noted.
A practitioner prints a protocol for clinic use. A veterinarian in a district clinic may download a CC BY treatment or diagnostic protocol, print it for the practice, and adapt the dosage table for local availability. The adaptation must still credit the original authors and must not imply that they endorse the adapted version.
A translator produces a local-language version. Because CC BY permits adaptations, a researcher may translate an article, or part of it, into another language and distribute the translation, with credit to the original and a note that it is a translation. A CC BY-ND licence would not permit this, which is one reason translations of important guidance are far easier under CC BY.
A textbook publisher includes the article in a commercial collection. Under CC BY, commercial reuse is permitted, so a publisher may include the article in a book sold for profit, with attribution. Some authors are surprised by this, but it is the deliberate bargain of CC BY: the widest possible circulation, including through commercial channels that reach readers the original journal may not.
A systematic reviewer reuses data and text in a meta-analysis. Text and data mining, extraction of tables for re-analysis, and inclusion of figures in a review are all permitted under CC BY, subject to credit. This is a major practical advantage for evidence synthesis: reviewers do not need to negotiate permissions article by article.
A policymaker quotes the findings in national guidance. A ministry or professional body drafting animal health guidance may quote, summarise, and reproduce tables from a CC BY article, with attribution, without waiting for permission. For research intended to change practice, that speed and certainty matter as much as the absence of a paywall.
What CC BY does not allow is also worth stating plainly. It does not permit a reuser to claim the work as their own, to remove your name, to suggest that you endorse their adaptation, or to apply additional legal or technological restrictions that would stop others exercising the same rights. Attribution is not a courtesy under CC BY; it is the licence condition on which every reuse depends.
Authors new to open access sometimes assume the licence and the fee are decided at submission. In a legitimate journal they are not. The usual order is: you submit the manuscript; the editor checks scope and completeness; the manuscript goes through peer review — at GAP, double-blind peer review; the editor makes a decision based on the reviewers' reports and the manuscript's quality; only after acceptance do the publication arrangements begin. Those arrangements include signing a licence agreement confirming that the article will be published under CC BY 4.0, confirming who will pay any APC or whether a waiver applies, and checking author details, funding statements, and competing-interest declarations for the published version.
After acceptance, production follows: copyediting, typesetting, proof checking by the authors, and publication of the version of record — the final, citable article — free to read on the journal site. At that point the licence applies to the published version, and readers may share and reuse it under CC BY terms. Keeping this order in mind protects authors: any journal that asks for payment before peer review, or that makes acceptance conditional on payment, is not following the standard open access process, and that is a warning sign worth taking seriously.
APCs vary widely between journals, fields, and publishers, and the headline figure is only part of the story. Before submitting to any open access journal, confirm the following in writing from the journal's own pages: the exact APC amount and the currency it is charged in; when it becomes payable — normally after acceptance, never before peer review; whether the fee covers the whole article or whether there are separate charges for colour figures, extra pages, or supplementary material; who is expected to pay — the corresponding author, the institution, or the funder; what happens if the article is withdrawn after acceptance; and whether a waiver or discount applies to your situation. A journal that cannot answer those questions clearly is not ready for your submission.
It is also worth understanding what an APC does not buy. It does not buy acceptance, faster or more favourable peer review, or a particular editorial decision. It does not buy indexing: no legitimate journal can sell a place in an index, and any claim of that kind should be treated as a red flag. And it does not, on its own, guarantee readership — readers still find articles through search, citations, professional networks, and recommendations. What an APC buys is the publishing service itself: review management, production, hosting, persistent identification, and the freedom for every reader to access the result without paying.
Most authors do not pay an APC from personal funds, and you should explore institutional routes before assuming the cost falls to you. First, check whether your research grant includes a publication budget: many grants allow publication costs as an eligible expense, but some require the cost to be claimed within the grant period, so confirm the timing early. Second, ask your university library or research office whether it runs an open access fund, holds a publishing agreement with the journal's publisher, or can cover the fee under an institutional membership. Third, check whether a co-author's institution can pay, particularly where co-authors are spread across institutions with different levels of support. Fourth, ask the journal directly about a waiver or discount, with a brief, honest explanation of your circumstances. Our guide to APC waivers explains how to make that request and what information journals typically ask for.
A practical tip: raise the funding question at submission, not after acceptance. Editors and publishers deal with fee questions routinely, and an early question causes no embarrassment and no delay to review. A late question, by contrast, can hold up production while invoices and waivers are sorted out. Keep a short record for every submission — the APC amount, the funder or institution covering it, the waiver decision, and the invoice reference — because funders and finance offices often ask for that record when the article is published or audited.
Funder mandates sound uniform, but their details differ, and the details are what determine compliance. When you open your funder's open access policy, look for four things. First, timing: does the policy require immediate open access on publication, or does it allow an embargo period? Second, version: must the version of record be open, or is the accepted manuscript in a repository sufficient? Third, licence: is CC BY required, recommended, or merely permitted? Fourth, route: does the policy accept publication in a fully open access journal, deposit in a repository, or both? Many policies accept either route, provided the licence and timing conditions are met.
One mechanism authors increasingly use is rights retention: the author includes a statement at submission asserting the right to make the accepted manuscript openly available under a CC BY licence, regardless of any later publishing agreement. Whether that statement is effective depends on your funder, your institution, and the journal's policy, so check before relying on it — but it is worth knowing the option exists, because it can reconcile a subscription journal's standard agreement with a funder's immediate open access requirement. Whatever route you take, keep the evidence: the published licence statement, the repository record, and any correspondence about the licence. Compliance is much easier to demonstrate at the end of a grant if the record was kept from the start. For authors planning a veterinary or animal sciences submission, our GJVAS author guide and our guide to choosing the right journal explain how scope, licence, and funder requirements fit together in a single submission decision.
Green open access deserves a closer look, because it is the route many authors use when their chosen journal is not fully open access — and because its rules are easy to get wrong. Three versions of an article matter, and they are not interchangeable. The preprint is the version submitted for review, before peer review. The accepted manuscript (also called the postprint) is the version after peer review, incorporating reviewers' corrections, but before the publisher's typesetting and formatting. The version of record is the final published article, with the journal's layout, pagination, and DOI. Journals and funders treat these versions differently: a journal may allow the preprint to be shared freely, permit the accepted manuscript in a repository after an embargo, and reserve the version of record for subscribers.
To deposit correctly, follow four steps. First, check the journal's self-archiving policy before you submit, not after publication, so there are no surprises. Second, keep a clean copy of your accepted manuscript — the text as accepted, without the publisher's typesetting — because that is usually the version you are permitted to deposit. Third, deposit it in your institutional repository, a subject repository, or both, with full citation details and a link to the published version where one exists. Fourth, respect the embargo: if the policy requires a delay before the deposited copy becomes public, set the repository record to open automatically when the embargo ends rather than making it public early. Done this way, green open access gives your work a free-to-read route without breaching your publishing agreement.
Example 1 — an early-career researcher with no grant. A recent veterinary graduate in a low-income economy has completed a small study on poultry vaccination and has no publication budget. The gold route in a journal with a full waiver is the most direct option: the article is published open access under CC BY 4.0, the waiver removes the APC, and the author retains copyright. The key step is asking about the waiver at submission and confirming it in writing before review concludes, so production is not delayed later.
Example 2 — a funded One Health team with a CC BY mandate. A multi-institution team studying zoonotic disease is funded by a grant that requires immediate open access under CC BY. The team budgets the APC in the grant, publishes in a fully open access journal under CC BY 4.0, and deposits the published version details in their institutions' repositories. Because the licence and timing both match the mandate, compliance is straightforward, and the team keeps the invoice and licence statement for the grant's final report. Related guidance on publishing across human, animal, and environmental health is covered in our article on One Health research publishing.
Example 3 — a practitioner-researcher publishing in a subscription journal. A clinician-researcher publishes in a well-regarded subscription journal in their specialty, which does not offer a suitable gold option within their budget. They use the green route: after acceptance, they deposit the accepted manuscript in their institutional repository, observe the journal's embargo, and link the repository record to the published version. Readers without a subscription can still read the peer-reviewed findings, albeit in manuscript form and after the embargo, and the author has not breached the publishing agreement.
These examples share one lesson: there is rarely a single "correct" open access route. The right choice depends on your funding, your funder's policy, the journals in your field, and how quickly and widely you need the work to be available. Choosing deliberately, before submission, is what turns open access from a compliance exercise into a genuine advantage for your work.
Open access has also created opportunities for journals that imitate legitimate publishing without its standards, and authors should apply the same caution here as with any submission decision. Be wary of any journal that requests payment before peer review, promises acceptance within an implausibly short time, lists an editorial board whose members do not appear to know they are listed, or claims indexing or metrics it does not hold. A genuine open access journal is transparent about its APC, its waiver policy, its peer review process, and its licence — and it states plainly, as we do for GJVAS, when matters such as ISSN and DOI arrangements are still in application rather than granted. Our full guide to avoiding predatory journals sets out the checks to run before you submit anywhere, and those checks matter most of all for open access journals, where a fee is involved.
Use this checklist for every open access submission. Confirm the journal's access model and licence — ideally CC BY 4.0 if your funder requires it. Confirm the APC, who pays it, and whether a waiver or discount applies, and ask early if cost is a barrier. Check your funder's and institution's policies for timing, version, and licence requirements. Confirm the peer review model and that payment follows acceptance, not the other way round. Keep a copy of your accepted manuscript for repository deposit. And record the licence, the fee or waiver decision, and the repository details alongside your submission record. A few minutes on these checks before submission prevents the most common open access problems: a surprise fee, a licence that does not satisfy a funder, or a manuscript that cannot be shared because the permitted version was never kept.
| Model | Who pays | Reader access | Typical route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | APC by author or funder | Free at once | Journal website |
| Green | No fee | Free after embargo | Repository copy |
| Diamond | Institution or society | Free at once | No author fee |
| Hybrid | APC in a subscription journal | Free for that article | Optional open choice |
These authoritative external resources explain the standards and tools mentioned in this guide:
Is open access publishing lower quality than subscription publishing?
No. Quality comes from peer review and editorial standards, not from the access model. Open access journals apply the same review processes — at GAP, double-blind peer review — and the licence only governs who can read and reuse the published article.
Do I keep the copyright to my open access article?
Yes. Under a Creative Commons licence you retain copyright and grant readers reuse rights in advance. Under CC BY 4.0, anyone may reuse your work, including commercially, provided they credit you properly.
What is the difference between gold and green open access?
Gold means the journal itself publishes the final article open access. Green means the article appears in a journal (often a subscription one) and the author deposits an accepted-manuscript version in a repository, sometimes after an embargo.
Do I have to pay an APC to publish open access?
Not always. Diamond open access journals charge authors nothing, and many gold journals — including launch-phase journals — offer full or partial fee waivers. Always check the journal's waiver policy before submitting, and ask early if cost is a barrier.
Does open access satisfy my funder's requirements?
Usually, yes. Most funder mandates require immediate open access under an open licence, most often CC BY. Publishing in a fully open access journal under CC BY 4.0 meets the great majority of these policies, but do check your own funder's exact wording.
Can someone reuse my CC BY article commercially without asking me?
Yes, provided they credit you, link to the licence, and indicate any changes. That is the deliberate scope of CC BY: it permits commercial reuse, including inclusion in a book or course sold for profit. If commercial reuse is a concern for you, check whether your funder permits a more restrictive licence, such as CC BY-NC, before you submit.
Can I translate or adapt my own open access article later?
Yes. As copyright holder you may translate, update, or adapt your own work. Under CC BY, other people may also translate or adapt it, with credit to you and a note that changes were made. A translation is an adaptation, so it would not be permitted under a NoDerivatives (ND) licence.
What version of my article can I put in a repository?
It depends on the journal's policy. Commonly, the accepted manuscript — the peer-reviewed text before publisher typesetting — may be deposited, sometimes after an embargo, while the version of record remains the publisher's formatted article. Always check the journal's self-archiving policy and keep a clean copy of your accepted manuscript.
When do I pay an APC, and what if I cannot afford it?
In a legitimate journal, an APC is payable after acceptance, never before peer review, and the editorial decision is independent of payment. If cost is a barrier, ask about a waiver or discount at submission, and check whether your grant or institution can cover the fee. Never let a fee question delay asking — publishers handle these requests routinely.
Does publishing open access guarantee more citations?
No. Open access removes the paywall barrier, so more people can read and potentially cite your work, but citations depend on the quality, relevance, and visibility of the research itself. No honest publisher can promise a citation outcome for an individual paper.
How do I check whether an open access journal is legitimate?
Check that its APC, waiver policy, peer review process, and licence are stated openly; that its editorial board is real and identifiable; that it does not ask for payment before review; and that it does not claim indexing or identifiers it does not hold. If any of those checks fail, pause and investigate before submitting.
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