Emerald and Open Access

Open Access for authors - offering a choice of publication routes in Open Access

Emerald works closely with the communities it serves to balance the requirements and rights of authors with the sustainability and development of titles.

Our objective is to ensure the widest possible dissemination of research and future innovation in scholarly communication. We seek to respond specifically to the needs of researchers in the disciplines we serve and continue to review our policies on a regular basis.

Key Principles of Emerald’s Open Access Policy:

• Emerald is fully RoMEO Green across all its journal titles
• Emerald supports an author's right to voluntarily self-archive their works without payment or embargo
• If you have funds for an Article Processing Charge (APC), Emerald can publish your article via the Gold Open Access route under a Creative Commons (CC BY) Licence. APCs are set at a journal level, and range from £1250/US$2000 to £1750/US$2800 (plus VAT added as applicable under UK VAT rules). Prices are reviewed on an annual basis and are subject to change. To find the APC for your journal, please refer to the 2017 APC price list.
• If you are mandated to make your work Open Access but have no funds for an APC you may deposit the author accepted manuscript of your article into a subject or institutional repository and your funder's research catalogue, subject to embargo periods. For the embargo period for your journal, please see here.

Emerald currently offers two routes for Open Access, Green Open Access (Green OA) and Gold Open Access (Gold OA).

• Green Open Access
• Gold Open Access
• FAQs
• Emerald also offers Emerald Publishing Services (EPS)

Green Open Access

Emerald's Green OA route offers all Emerald authors of journal articles the option to make their research openly available, free from payment and time restrictions.

Once an article has been published by Emerald, an author may voluntarily post their own version of the article that was submitted to the journal (pre-print) or the version of the article that has been accepted for publication (post-print) onto their own personal website or into their own institutional repository with no payment or embargo period. Authors may also use their own version of the paper (pre-print or post-print) for their own teaching purposes. Exceptions to this policy:

• Terms exclude the deposit of the version of the article that was submitted to the journal (pre-print) or of the accepted article (post-print) into a subject repository or the repository of another institution.
• Emerald does not permit the systematic upload or collation of Emerald articles across repositories. For any specific queries in relation to repositories, please contact permissions@emeraldinsight.com.
• For funded research, there is the opportunity for the author to choose the Gold OA route, or make a voluntary deposit of their article with a 24 month embargo from publication (see the Gold OA section below for full details).

In a new pilot from July 2015 for authors who submit articles to Library and Information Science and selected Information and Knowledge Management journals, the post-print version of this article can be deposited by the author into their respective institutional repository immediately upon official publication. To see a list of journals currently under this trial, please refer to this list.

For further information on author's rights, definition of terms and correct referencing conventions, please refer to the Emerald Author Rights page.

Gold Open Access

Emerald has offered a Gold OA route to its authors of articles in any Emerald journal published after the 1st April 2013. This is sometimes referred to as the "author pays" or "hybrid" model. The Gold OA route complies with the requirements made by funding bodies around the world, such as the RCUK or the Wellcome Trust, whereby mandates mean that the author must arrange for the research to be made openly accessible.

If an author has received direct funding and is mandated to make the branded Publisher PDF (also known as the "Version of Record") freely available immediately upon publication, the author has the option to pay an APC.

For authors wishing to publish using the Gold OA route, please refer to the following guidelines.

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Guidance for Authors

How does Emerald's "Gold OA" route work?

• Your article is submitted and accepted in an Emerald journal in the usual way via ScholarOne Manuscripts™, subject to full, double blind peer review.
• In the submission process, you can select Gold OA via the payment of an APC subject to acceptance. To do this, you must state on the "details and comments" page who has funded the research and answer "yes" to the OA question.
• Once you have selected "yes" to this question and if your article is subsequently accepted for publication following peer review, you will receive an invoice for the APC. The publication of the article will not proceed until payment has been received.
• APCs are set at a journal level, and range from £1250/US$2000 to £1750/US$2800 (plus VAT added as applicable under UK VAT rules). Prices are reviewed on an annual basis and are subject to change. To find the APC for your journal, please refer to the 2017 APC price list.
• Emerald has established partnerships with national consortium bodies to offer an agreed number of gratis APCs for eligible regions and institutions. To check your eligibility please refer to the Open Access Partnerships page.
• Payment of an APC will guarantee the article is made Open Access upon the official date of publication; this will also include the ability for the corresponding author to check and amend article proofs prior to publication (on condition that proofs are returned to Emerald within 48 hours).
• Articles published through the Gold OA route will be made OA under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the original author and source are credited. This is fully compliant with current funder mandates.
• Please note that Emerald is unable to assign your article to an issue to publish Gold Open Access articles until payment has been received.

What happens if I have a mandate but no publication funds are available?

• If a mandate is in place but funding is not available to pay an APC, you may deposit the post-print of your article into an institutional repository and your funder's research catalogue 24 months after official publication (or immediately if published in Emerald's Library and Information Science and selected Information and Knowledge Management journals – full list here). This timeframe is in line with recommendations made by RCUK for research in the social sciences.
• If you are mandated to make the post-print (accepted article) or published PDF openly accessible immediately on acceptance or publication but do not have the funding available to pay an APC, please contact openaccess@emeraldinsight.com to discuss the specific terms of the repository. Emerald seeks to support the mutual interests of the author, institution and journal title.

Emerald and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)

• Emerald's longstanding support of IFLA provides the advantage of the Emerald platform to increase the discoverability of research presented at IFLA events.
• Papers that have their origins in an IFLA conference or project have the opportunity to be published in one of Emerald's Library and Information Science journals and become free to access nine months after publication.
  

Open Access Books

Emerald is now accepting proposals for Open Access books. For further information please refer to our Open Access Books page.

Contact us

If you have any queries about Open Access or our policies, then please contact us and we will be happy to deal with your enquiry. In addition, Emerald has also prepared some Frequently Asked Questions (below) to help understanding of its policy and Open Access as a whole.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are Article Processing Charges (APCs)?

A: APCs allow authors to make their work freely available, subject to acceptance following peer review. APCs subsidize the costs associated with our editorial systems, production (such as typesetting and subediting) and hosting (including perpetual archiving through the LOCKSS and Portico schemes). This cost is usually covered by the grants authors receive from research funding agencies. The payment of an APC allows articles to be made Open Access immediately, but is entirely independent of, and holds no bias over the editorial and peer review processes operated by Emerald journals.

Q: What if I do not want my articles published through Open Access?

A: Authors who have received direct funding with a mandate may be obliged to make subsequent research articles openly accessible (it may be worth consulting with your funding body about the mandate appropriate to your research). However, the majority of authors may publish their research through academic journals as they have done previously.

Q: What do you mean by "official publication"?

A: Official publication refers to the date that the Emerald-branded version (the Version of Record) is made available. It does not refer to the EarlyCited version (in press article).

Q: How do I pay to make my article OA?

A: When an article is accepted for publication, authors who have indicated they have a mandate will be asked to pay the APC. APCs are set at a journal level, and range from £1250/US$2000 to £1750/US$2800 (plus VAT added as applicable under UK VAT rules). Prices are reviewed on an annual basis and are subject to change. To find the APC for your journal, please refer to the 2017 APC price list. Payment will be requested in the form of an invoice that can be paid by the author directly or arranged with an appropriate funding agency or academic institution, depending on the location of those funds. Please note payment can only be accepted by BACS transfer or cheque.

The article will not be assigned to an issue and proofs will not be sent to the corresponding author until payment has been received.

Authors wishing to make their article Gold OA should check with their institutional APC administrator (prior to submission) to ensure that funds for APCs are still available.

Q: Under what circumstances are APC refunds made?

A: For a full outline of the circumstances in which APC refunds are offered, please see our APC refund policy.

Q: I don't have an OA mandate, but my co-author does. What do we do?

A: Your co-author will need to contact their institutional administrator to check the stipulations of their mandate. The person who has a mandate and needs to pay an APC must be designated as the corresponding author at the point of submission in order to receive the invoice.