Open Access is now the default expectation of most large funders, and the terminology around it has become genuinely confusing. The colours do not form a coherent system, several of them overlap, and the cost implications differ enormously depending on who funds you and where you work.
The routes, without the jargon
Gold
The final published version is free to read on the publisher’s site, immediately. The publisher recovers cost through an article processing charge, or APC, usually paid by the author’s funder or institution. APCs at selective journals commonly run from US$2,000 to US$6,000, and occasionally higher.
Green
The article is published behind a paywall, but a version of it, usually the accepted manuscript rather than the typeset final, is deposited in a repository. Often free to the author. Frequently subject to an embargo of six to twenty-four months.
Diamond
Free to read and free to publish. Costs are carried by a society, institution or consortium. Diamond journals are more common than most researchers realise, particularly in the humanities and in non-Anglophone publishing, and they are systematically under-considered because they lack marketing budgets.
Hybrid
A subscription journal that offers a per-article Open Access option for a fee. The most expensive route per article, and the one funders are most actively moving away from, because the publisher receives both subscription revenue and APCs.
What you may not have to pay
A substantial share of researchers pay APCs from their own budgets that they were not required to pay at all. Before you submit, check the following in order.
- Transformative or read-and-publish agreements. Many institutions hold agreements with major publishers that cover APCs entirely for corresponding authors at that institution. Your library maintains the list. This is the single largest source of unnecessary spending.
- Funder block grants. Several funders provide institutions with a dedicated Open Access fund, administered separately from your project budget.
- Country waivers. Research4Life and equivalent schemes provide full or partial waivers for authors in eligible countries. Most large publishers apply these automatically, but not all, and not always correctly.
- Society membership discounts. Frequently 10 to 25 per cent, often worth more than the membership itself.
- Editorial waivers. Discretionary, less advertised, and granted more often than authors assume. Ask before submission, not after acceptance.
Check your library’s agreement list before choosing a journal, not after acceptance. Being covered at one journal and not at a comparable one is common, and it is a legitimate factor in choosing where to submit.
Licences, which matter more than they appear to
Gold Open Access articles carry a Creative Commons licence, and the specific licence has consequences.
- CC BY permits reuse and adaptation with attribution. Required by many funders. The most permissive, and the most common mandate.
- CC BY-NC excludes commercial reuse. Sometimes not compliant with funder policy, so check before choosing it.
- CC BY-ND prohibits derivatives. Rarely funder-compliant.
If your funder mandates CC BY and you accept a more restrictive licence, you may have a compliance problem that surfaces at reporting time, long after the article is published and difficult to reverse.
Judging whether an APC is reasonable
Price does not track quality. What a legitimate APC buys is editorial handling, peer review management, production, typesetting, archiving and indexing. Signals that the charge is not buying those things:
- An APC well below the market rate combined with promised review turnaround in days.
- No clear statement of the charge until after acceptance.
- Indexing claims that cannot be verified in the index itself.
- An editorial board whose listed members cannot be confirmed independently.
Verify the indexing claim directly in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed or DOAJ rather than trusting the journal’s own page. It takes two minutes and it is the single most reliable check available to you.