All open access articles are subject to peer review, editorial oversight, and the journals production process. While the submission and review process follow the traditional process, there are additional forms and steps that need to be taken to publish your work as open access.
Hybrid open access
Authors of accepted peer reviewed articles in subscriptions journals have the choice to publish their work as open access. Authors will be prompted in the revision process to indicate if they would like to choose an open access license for their article. Below are the outlined steps toward guaranteeing your article will publish as open access.
Gold open access
On submission to a gold journal, you will be asked if you could confirm your understanding of the gold open access policy and accept responsibility for the payment of the article processing charge (APC). Payment is required upon acceptance of your manuscript for publication.
Notifying the Editorial Office
When submitting your article you will be asked the following question: “Would you like to publish your paper as an open access article? Please note that selecting ‘Yes’ will incur additional fees, the details of which can be found here.
For more information on open access and the article processing charge, please visit the FAQs.” If you have chosen ‘Yes’ to this question and are accepted, you will need to complete a License to Publish form and make a payment for the article.
Additionally, you may contact the Editorial Office of the journal for more information on open access and the journal.
License to Publish form
Wolters Kluwer’s License to Publish (LTP) form must be completed, in full, by the corresponding author on behalf of all the authors before an article can be made open access. All articles publishing in a hybrid journal will be published under the CC BY-NC-ND license unless you received funding from an approved funder that mandates your work be published under a CC BY license. Many of our gold journals allow the authors to choose one of several CC licenses including CC BY. However please check with the journal’s Editorial Office for the specific licenses that are available to choose. Our For Institutions and Funders page will have more detail on the approved funders. If you need a new form, please contact the journal’s Editorial Office.
Article processing charge (APC) payment
Wolters Kluwer will provide authors with a link and instructions on how to pay via our online RightsLink payment portal for authors who choose open access for their article. First-time authors will have to create an account/log in. Please note: this account is separate from any other accounts you may have for the Journal.
There will be two options for payment:
- Credit card
- Raise an invoice
Credit Card payments will be processed immediately, and you will receive an email stating that RightsLink CCC has accepted your order. For invoices, RightsLink CCC will mail an invoice for the full amount of the APC within five business days to the address provided. Full payments must be received within 30 days of the invoice date or your article risks publication without an open access license.
APC Refund Policy
If after acceptance of your article for publication but prior to publication (be it online or other format or media), it is determined that the article will not be published for any reason, then you will be refunded up to 25% of the relevant fees you paid. Under no circumstances shall refunds be made for published articles.
Requesting open access after publication
Authors have up to one year to request that their article be published as open access, however, some benefits are not available once the article is published.
- The author will still retain the copyright of the article.
- The article will be made freely available on the journal website for any user, worldwide.
- The article will have the OPEN indicator on the online version of the article, however, the Creative Commons license chosen may not be published.
- The final version of article will be submitted to PubMed Central as open access on the authors’ behalf.
- If you would like to request open access for your article, please contact the journal’s Editorial Office and ask for the next steps.