Open access

Gold open access

What is it?

It is when published research is free for everyone to read and use. Here is how it works:

Published articles are:

• peer-reviewed
• immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download
• able to be reused in a number of different ways as defined by the user licence
• permanently preserved in our digital archives
• have CrossMark® which links copies of the article to the final version of record to maintain the publication record

What does it cost?

All gold open access articles are free for everyone to read. We can provide gold open access services because the article publishing charge (APC) that authors, their institutions or funding bodies pay, covers all expenses needed to support the publication process. Our APCs range from $500-$5000 USD
and specific prices can be found on the individual journal’s homepages.

Where can you publish?

• Open access journals: do not have any subscribers and publish all their articles gold open access. See a list of open access journals (in English) published by Elsevier
• Hybrid journals: support open access and are two journals in one: a subscription journal and an open access journal. After acceptance authors can choose how they wish to publish and broadcast their research.
• Subsidised journals: published research is free to read and the APC is subsidised by an organisation or society which means authors do not need to pay directly.

Complying with policies

We are also able to help researchers in complying with the policies of their funders and institutions. We have established a number of agreements with organisations such as the Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK, which help to outline the compliant open access options available to researchers. See our list of funding body agreements.

Licences

Everyone is able to download, copy and share gold open access articles. We provide authors with a choice of publishing under either the Creative Commons licences CC-BY or the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND user licence. These licences will help to maximise the impact of your article, getting the most spread
and use out of it.

Green open access

What is it?

It is a version of a subscription article which is also free for everyone to access.

What does it cost?

Green open access is possible because subscribers pay all the expenses needed to support the publication process. This means authors do not need to pay any additional charges.

When can you share?

Millions of researchers have subscriptions to immediately access research on ScienceDirect. To enable open access for a subscription article a time delay, known as an embargo period, is needed. This begins from the date the article is formally published online in its final and fully citable form (i.e. online publication date or the issue publication date). Our embargo periods typically range from 12 – 24 months and specific embargo periods can be found on the individual journal homepages. Search for an embargo period 

How can you share?

• Linking: Sharing a link to the article can be done immediately either via our Share Link service or with the article’s permanent address (DOI).
• Open Archives: Everyone can read and download free archived material in 105 Elsevier journals after an embargo period.
• Self-archiving: Authors can post a copy of their research for everyone to read for free. See our sharing policy for details. (in English)

New services

There are also alternative ways in which Elsevier is enabling linking to articles. For example, if your funder partners CHORUS, all readers will be able to search for your article and follow a link to ScienceDirect where they can access either the final version of the article or the accepted manuscript.