Open research FAQs

Here, we have answered some frequently asked questions about open research. Get in touch if you have any further questions.

There are costs involved in publishing content; for example, editorial systems, production (such as typesetting and sub-editing) and hosting (including perpetual archiving through the LOCKSS, CLOCKSS and Portico schemes). An article processing charge (APC), chapter processing charge (CPC) or book processing charge (BPC) cover those costs.

Please note, payment of an APC, BPC or CPC is independent of and holds no bias over the editorial and peer review processes operated by Emerald Open Research, journal and book teams.

We’re committed to supporting authors in telling the full story of their research, its impact, and championing change in research assessment culture.

We also ensure that every author has a pathway to publish openly, whatever their circumstances, including a zero-embargo green policy, and a programme of fully open gold and platinum journals.

When an author publishes their work open access in one of our hybrid subscriptions or an un-sponsored open access title, the cost of publication is met via a charge referred to as an Article Processing Charge (APC). This covers the cost of turning a manuscript into a published article and dissemination to the widest audience. It is usually paid by the funder or institution.

You can check if we have a transformative agreement with your institution in our Open access publishing agreements section.

When publishing with Emerald, we look after the following: 

  • Facilitation of the peer review process
  • Undertake editorial checks and copy editing of your article prior to publication
  • Typesetting and tagging of your research to ensure it’s searchable and discoverable
  • Publication on Emerald’s platform
  • The aggregation, abstracting and indexing of your research as relevant to the journal submitted to
  • Preservation of the article in perpetuity through Portico, LOCKSS and CLOCKSS.
  • Adherence to the highest publishing standards and best practice through our membership of COPE, the Committee on Publishing Ethics and follow the principles laid out in its Core Practice
  • Support should ethical concerns arise.

Your co-author will need to contact their institutional administrator to check the requirements of their mandate.

The person who has a mandate and needs to pay an APC, BPC or CPC must be designated the corresponding author at the point of submission in order to receive the invoice.

If a mandate is in place but funding is not available to pay an APC, you may deposit the AAM/post-print of your article in your institutional repository or website. For a full outline of our policy on self-archiving please see our green open access policy.

Alternatively, a number of organisations have established partnerships with us to cover the cost of publishing an agreed number of gold open access articles from their regions.

In addition, we are able to waive the publication charge to support publication of research from low or lower-middle income countries in our fully open access journals. See our APC waiver policy for more information.

Authors who have received direct funding with a mandate may be obliged to make the resulting research openly accessible. It may be worth consulting with your funding body about the mandate appropriate to your research.

We work closely with libraries and national consortia to support their goals and requirements for open access research output. A number of organisations have established partnerships with us to cover the cost of an agreed number of gold open access articles or agreed a discount for their regions. You can check your eligibility on our open access publishing agreements page.

Corresponding authors based in countries classified by the World Bank as ‘low’ or ‘lower – middle’ income are eligible for a full or 50% waiver to publish in fully open access Emerald journals. For further details, please see our APC waiver policy.

Journal APCs

We have a single rate article processing charge (APC) for all our hybrid and fully open journals.

View article processing charge

 

CCBY 4.0 (GBP)

CCBY  4.0 (USD)

CCBY 4.0 (EUR)

Monograph

£9,000

$13,999

€11,299

Short form

£6,000

$9,399

€7,499

Handbook

£12,000

$18,699

€14,999

Under the UK VAT guidelines, VAT at the standard rate of 20% will be added for any customers in the UK and any non-business customers outside the UK. Business customers from outside the UK who can provide a valid VAT registration number (or similar evidence of being in business) will not be charged UK VAT, although local taxes may still apply.

The CPC is a fixed charge, depending on chapter length:

  • Fewer than 5,000 words - US$1,200
  • 5,000-8,000 words - US$1,500
  • 8,000-15,000 words - US$2,500

Under the UK VAT guidelines, VAT at the standard rate of 20% will be added for any customers in the UK and any non-business customers outside the UK. Business customers from outside the UK who can provide a valid VAT registration number (or similar evidence of being in business) will not be charged UK VAT, although local taxes may still apply.

Under the UK VAT guidelines, VAT at the standard rate of 20% will be added for any customers in the UK and any non-business customers outside the UK.

Business customers from outside the UK who can provide a valid VAT registration number (or similar evidence of being in business) will not be charged UK VAT, although local taxes may still apply.

If you’ve published in a journal or on Emerald Open Research, our APC refund policy will apply.

For all gold OA content published in books, journals and on Emerald Open Research, we offer one of the most liberal of the Creative Commons licences – the Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). As long as readers abide by the licence conditions (for example, give appropriate credit), they can:

  • Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt the material as required, for any purpose, both commercial and non-commercial

A number of organisations have established partnerships with us to cover the cost of an agreed number of gold open access articles from their regions.

Corresponding authors based in countries classified by the World Bank as having low or lower-middle income are eligible to publish in fully open access Emerald journals. For further details, including information on how to apply, please see our APC waiver policy.

We allow authors to change the OA status of their article post-publication. Requests need to be made within 3 months of official publication or within the same volume year, whichever period is the longest.

You can filter on OA journals using our journal search function. You will also find more information on our open research page.

If you’ve chosen a fully open access title, the process is almost identical to that followed for any other journal submission: you can find a step-by-step journal submission guide on our author pages. However, if you’ve chosen a hybrid journal (which also publishes non-OA articles), at the point of submission, you will need to indicate that you want to publish gold OA in the journal’s ScholarOne submission system.

The Emerald Open Research platform will close at the end of 2023, with the platform now closed to new submissions.

We are committed to ensuring that customers never pay twice for the same content. Details of how we prevent this can be found in our double dipping policy.

We actively encourage data sharing. For more detail, view our open data policy.

All the content in fully open access journals is published gold OA, i.e. it is immediately and freely available to readers. Hybrid journals contain a mix of gold OA articles and subscription content. While the gold OA articles are immediately and freely available, the subscription content can only be accessed by paying customers. For more information on the various journal models, visit <How to publish open access in our journals>.

Gold open access refers to making the version of record (i.e. the final, publisher’s typeset PDF), freely and immediately available to read and reuse upon publication. This is made possible through the payment of an APC (article processing charge) or BPC (book processing charge) or CPC (chapter processing charge) by the author, their funder, or their institution.

In the case of Emerald, green open access, also known as self-archiving, allows authors to share the author accepted manuscript, or AAM, via certain online repositories or platforms as soon as the work has been published, without embargo. That version is then freely and immediately available to read.

For more information on green and gold OA, visit Our open research policies page.

All our content published open access, whether via the green or gold OA route, is fully and rigorously peer-reviewed.

The payment of an APC/BPC for gold OA is independent of, and holds no bias over, the editorial and peer review processes operated by the Emerald Open Research, journal and book teams.

You can view, sort, filter and download all of our content published via the open access route on this dedicated Emerald Insight page.

All gold open access content (where an APC or BPC has been paid or a voucher exchanged) is automatically published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which allows anyone to share, distribute and adapt the content for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

This licence is compliant with all existing funder and institutional mandates.

For green open access content (where the author accepted manuscript (AAM) is posted on certain repositories) we offer two options: see our green open access policy for further details.

When you submit your proposal for the book to the editorial team, all you need to do is add a note making it clear you are interested in publishing the book open access if it is accepted.

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