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Article processing charge (APC)
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A payment made to the publisher prior to publication so that the published output is freely available, usually under an open access licence (see “CC licence” below), immediately on publication via the publisher’s website. Note that these are in addition to any standard page or colour image charges.
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Author’s accepted manuscript (AAM)
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See “post-print”
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Author’s final version
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See “post-print”
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Block grant
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This refers to a sum of money provided directly to an institution by a funder or group of funders (e.g. UKRI or the British Heart Foundation) in order to support open access publication and enable compliance with funder open access policies. It is typically used to pay article processing charges but depending on the conditions of the grant may also be used to support other costs associated with open access publication.
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Book processing charge (BPC)
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A payment made to the publisher prior to publication so that the online version of the published book will be freely accessible immediately upon publication, usually under an open access license (see “CC licence”). May be levied on a chapter basis. Other charges (eg for extra colour images) may also apply.
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Bronze open access
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Articles that are free to read on the publisher's website but are still published under the publisher's standard terms and conditions. These articles are typically not published under an open licence that would allow for re-use and the publisher can choose to make these articles closed access again at any time.
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cOAlition S
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cOAlition S is a consortium of funders, organisations and charitable funders who have agreed to implement the ten recommendations of Plan S in an organised way.
Funders involved include UKRI, Wellcome Trust, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Corresponding author
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The corresponding author is the author who takes responsibility for the manuscript during the submission, peer review and publication process, on behalf of their co-authors. Their contact details appear on the final publication so they can be contacted for any queries about the paper.
Importantly, eligibility for Read and Publish deals (see below) is usually based on the affiliation of the corresponding author: for an article to be eligible for one of SGUL’s Read and Publish deals, the corresponding author must be a current student or member of staff at SGUL, or a member of the Trust with honorary status at SGUL.
Some publishers, e.g. Wiley, require assignment of a single “responsible corresponding author” to act on behalf of all the co-authors, which may have implications for manuscripts with multiple corresponding authors.
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Creative Commons (CC) licence
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The Creative Commons (or CC) licences are some of the most commonly used open access licences. If one of the CC licences is applied to your work, this identifies exactly what re-use rights are allowed. There are different types of CC licences, some more restrictive than others. All but one require that your work be correctly cited and attributed to you.
The CC0 (public domain) licence is the most open, the CC BY-NC-ND is the most restrictive and there are several other options in between:
 (CC licences explained ©Foter (adapted by Jisc) via Foter blog CC BY-SA)
Many funders require that you make publications arising from work they have funded, either in whole or in part, available under a specific type of CC licence. Several major funders specifically require CC-BY.
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CRediT
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Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is a predefined set of 14 roles describing typical types of activities in the research and publishing process, intended to enable authors to represent how they have contributed to a scholarly output in a standardised way.
An example of how these roles might be used in practice can be found in this document (PDF) from the Academy of Medical Sciences.
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CRIS
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SGUL’s Current Research Information System (CRIS) is a researcher-facing system holding metadata on publications authored by current and former SGUL researchers. It collects information about these publications from external data sources such as PubMed and allows authors to create their own manual records for their publications.
Authors are also able to upload/deposit full text versions of their publications via the CRIS. These are hosted and, where possible, made publicly available in SGUL’s repository, SORA.
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Diamond open access
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Diamond open access, sometimes called platinum open access, means that the published version of an article is made freely accessible via the publisher's website under an open access licence, but without charging a fee to the authors or their institutions.
As neither the author or reader is charged directly, diamond open access publications usually rely on external funding sources, such as grants, donations or advertising.
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DOAB
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The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a tool for indexing and accessing open access books and book publishers, established by the OAPEN Foundation. Both are not for profit. Unlike the OAPEN Library, (which provides open infrastructure services including hosting), DOAB indexes open access books rather than hosting them directly.
To be included, books must have undergone independent and external peer review, must be open access, and must meet academic standards. Publishers are also screened for trustworthiness before inclusion.
You can use Think, Check, Submit to help you assess if a publisher is trustworthy and suitable for your research.
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DOAJ
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The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a non-profit organisation which indexes open access journals. In order to be indexed, journals need to apply and meet DOAJ’s inclusion criteria. These include the use of an open license (Creative Commons or equivalent), and open access without embargo period or a requirement for users to register to read content. This means that if a journal is listed in DOAJ, it has met certain standards of openness and trustworthiness.
You can use Think, Check, Submit to help you assess if a journal is trustworthy and right for your research .
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DOI
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A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is an identifier that uniquely distinguishes one digital output from another. It is a permanent ID for digital material (similar to ISBN identifiers for books).
A DOI can be used to identify specific datasets, software, publications or other research outputs.
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Europe PubMed Central (EPMC)
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Europe PubMed Central (also known as Europe PMC or EPMC) is a repository containing open access biomedical research works. Much of its full text content is mirrored from PubMed Central (PMC). However, EPMC also contains citation-only records, information on grants awarded by its funders, and full text pre-prints, which are searchable alongside published journal articles.
In addition, EMPC allows principal investigators supported by one or more of its funders to submit their author’s accepted manuscripts directly. Many of its funders require full text versions of articles which they have supported to be made available in EPMC.
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Gold open access
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Gold open access means that the published version of the research is made available on a freely accessible basis via the publisher’s website immediately on publication, in perpetuity, with at least some re-use rights permitted, usually under a CC licence (see above).
This usually requires the payment of an open access fee, often referred to as an article processing charge (APC).
The term ‘gold’ may also be used to refer to journals that operate on a totally open access model, for example, PLOS One, the Frontiers group of journals and Nucleic Acids Research. The funding model of such journals means that all content is accessible for free, publishing costs being met by, for example, author payments or institutional deals.
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Green open access
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Green open access means making the author’s accepted manuscript of a published research output available via an institutional or subject repository, without paying a fee. The publisher may also require an embargo period (usually six to twelve months) before the article can be made available.
Some funders require a rights retention statement (RRS) to be included in the manuscript on submission in order to facilitate green open access (see below).
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Hybrid open access
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This usually describes a journal which operates under a subscription-based model, but also gives the option for individual articles to be published gold open access upon payment of an article processing charge (APC).
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Institutional repository
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An institutional repository is a digital archive that makes available full-text, open access copies of articles by authors at that institution. These will usually be the author's accepted manuscript or final published versions. Citation-only records may also be made available depending on the institution's policies.
SGUL’s institutional repository is SORA.
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Open access publishing platform
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This is a general term referring to platforms such as Wellcome Open Research or Gates Open Research where researchers can upload their outputs and have them made available immediately. An article processing charge (APC) may be required. They differ from traditional journals in several ways:
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Outputs are made available immediately in preprint form (after rapid initial pre-publication checks).
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Peer review is then carried out openly by the community, with revised versions being added by the authors to the record as they are available.
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Once the output has reached a certain threshold of “approved” or “approved with reservations” reviews, it is then indexed in bibliographic databases as a final published journal article would be. Authors can continue to add further revised versions after this point if they choose.
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All work is accepted regardless of perceived interest or novelty and a wide variety of output types can be published.
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Outputs may be compiled into collections but are not assigned a volume or issue.
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Open peer review
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Open peer review can refer to any model where an aspect of the peer review process is made publicly available. This usually means that the identities of reviewers, review comments, or both are published alongside the article.
This model is commonly used by open access publishing platforms, where peer review is carried out openly by the community, but some traditional journals also publish peer review reports and/or reviewers’ identities alongside their articles.
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ORCiD
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ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID. It is a free, unique persistent identifier (PID) for individuals that can be used across different information systems to disambiguate authors and their outputs. This ensures that publications and other activities are correctly attributed to the individual author.
An increasing number of publishers and funders now require the use of ORCiDs.
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Peer review
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Scholarly or academic peer review is the process of evaluating a work by one or more people with relevant knowledge and expertise. For journal articles, this process is usually used to determine a paper’s fitness for publication, with a journal editor making the decision on whether to accept, reject or ask for revisions based on reviewer reports.
Peer review can be single blinded, meaning that authors do not know the identity of reviewers; double blinded, meaning that neither authors nor reviewers know each other’s identity; or open (see “Open peer review”).
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PID
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A persistent identifier, or PID, is a term for any long-lasting, unique reference that points to a digital entity. It permits digital materials to be referenced reliably and permanently, even if their location and metadata change. ORCiDs and DOIs are types of persistent identifier.
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Plan S
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Plan S is an open science initiative intending to accelerate transformation towards an open science environment. Where funders have signed up to Plan S, work acknowledging these funders must be made available open access immediately on publication, preferably under a CC BY licence, by either:
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publishing via the gold route either via a Read and Publish deal or by paying the article processing charge (APC) in a compliant journal, or
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including a rights retention statement (RRS) on submission to the journal, allowing the author to make their author’s accepted manuscript available immediately on publication under a CC BY licence, usually in a subject or institutional repository. For an overview have a look at our Library webpage on rights retention.
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Platinum open access
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See "Diamond open access"
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Post-print
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The pre-proof version of a paper as accepted for publication, including any changes following peer review, but prior to publisher typesetting, formatting and copyright statements. Also known as the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) or author’s final version.
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Preprint
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A version of an article as submitted to a journal, or preprint server, but prior to peer review changes. Preprints are not currently deposited in SGUL’s institutional repository but there are many preprint specific platforms that house them (see below). Articles uploaded to a preprint server can be recorded in CRIS and may be linked to any subsequent publication.
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Preprint servers
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Preprint servers are free online archive and distribution platforms for preprints, often focusing on a particular subject area (e.g. bioRxiv, medRxiv). They allow authors to make their findings available immediately and receive feedback on them from the community.
Like open access publishing platforms (see above), preprints are made available on these servers after a basic screening process only and are published regardless of perceived interest or novelty. However, unlike open access platforms, revised versions can only be posted until the article has been formally accepted by a journal.
Most publishers do not consider release of a preprint to count as prior publication but some do; this information should be available in their instructions to authors. Some publishers now also host their own preprint servers (e.g. Preprints with The Lancet).
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Publisher version
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The final post-proof version of an article as published, including final formatting and copyediting. Also known as the Version of Record.
A publisher may also publish an early manuscript version online after acceptance but before the final published version is available. Some publishers consider this to be the accepted manuscript version (see “post-print”), others do not (e.g. Elsevier, who refer to these versions as “pre-proofs”).
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PubMed Central
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PubMed Central (or PMC) is a subject repository holding open access copies of biomedical and life sciences journal articles, hosted by the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NLM).
It is distinct from PubMed, also developed and maintained by the NLM, which only holds citations and abstracts, with links to publisher websites and open access copies in PMC where available.
Europe PubMed Central (see above) is a partner of PubMed Central.
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Read and Publish deal
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A Read & Publish deal is a contractual arrangement negotiated between institutions and publishers, whereby the traditional journal subscription (the ‘read’ element) also incorporates Article Processing Charges (the ‘publish’ element). Under such agreements SGUL Library pays for access to read journals as well as for our authors to publish their articles on an open access basis, subject to eligibility criteria.
Similar agreements exist with wholly open access publishers, whereby institutions pay a fee to the publisher in order for their authors to publish open access in some or all of that publisher’s journals.
These are also known as transformative or transitional agreements, as they are intended to transition the scholarly publishing landscape towards a fully open access model.
Please see our Paying Open Access Fees page for further details on our current deals and any eligibility requirements.
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Responsible corresponding author
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See “Corresponding author”
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Rights retention statement (RRS)
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A rights retention statement (or RRS) is a statement inserted into the submitted version of a manuscript to affirm that the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) arising from this submission is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY licence. This allows the author to make their AAM available in a repository immediately on publication under CC BY.
Several major funders now require these statements to be included on submission, including UKRI and the Wellcome Trust; for more information on these specific funders please see our UKRI FAQs and our Wellcome Trust page, or for a or for an overview have a look at our Library webpage on rights retention.
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SORA
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St George’s Online Research Archive (SORA) is SGUL’s institutional repository. It hosts and makes publicly available copies of the author’s accepted manuscript and final published versions of many publications authored by current and former SGUL-affiliated authors.
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Subject repository
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A subject repository is a digital archive that makes available full text copies of publications in that subject area, e.g. Europe PMC. Some subject repositories also make citation-only records available.
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Submitted version
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The manuscript version of an article as submitted to the publisher for consideration for publication. Some funders require a rights retention statement to be included at this stage (see above).
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Transformative agreement
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See “Read and Publish deal”
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Transitional agreement
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See “Read and Publish deal”
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Transformative journal
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A transformative journal is a subscription-based journal which has committed to transitioning to be fully open access. An increasing number of funders will now only allow their funds to be used to pay article processing charges (APCs) in transformative journals. This includes UKRI and the Wellcome Trust; please see our UKRI FAQs and our Wellcome Trust page for further details.
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Version of record
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See “Publisher version”
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