Summary
Premier Science journals are open access. The content is freely available and published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. We satisfy the DOAJ definition of open access.
What is Open Access?
Open access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly research. Open access journals provide ‘gold’ open access, meaning immediate open access to all of their articles on the publisher’s website. ‘Gold’ open access for individual articles is funded by authors, institutions, funders, or sponsors who pay an open access article-processing charge (APC) after acceptance.
We follow the DOAJ definition of Open access journal. These are journals where the copyright holder of a scholarly work grants usage rights to others using an open license (Creative Commons or equivalent).
Why Publish Open Access
Open access makes your work more visible and discoverable, increasing readership and citations and it ensures your compliance with open access mandates, your funder and institutional requirements. All UKRI and Wellcome Trust funded authors may publish their articles with a CC-BY license to comply with funder open access policies.
Open Access License
Premier Science applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to articles and other works we publish. When you submit your paper for publication by Premier Science, you agree to have the CC BY license applied to your work.
Under the CC BY Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can reuse your article in whole or part for any purpose, for free, even for commercial purposes. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse the content as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This facilitates freedom in re-use and also ensures that Premier Science content can be mined without barriers for the needs of research.
Who retains copyright of the article?
Authors retain copyright for their article and full publishing rights without restrictions.
Open access articles will be freely available to read, download and share from the time of publication under the CC BY licence.
Repository Policy
All versions of an article (submitted, accepted, final published version of record) can be deposited in an institutional or other repository of the author’s choice without embargo.
How will readers know articles are open access?
All open access articles will be marked with an icon bearing ‘Open access’ on the full-text and PDF formats of the published work, and information on the type of creative commons license will be available on all article formats and listed in the article metadata.
The full text of all content is available for free and open access without delay, with no embargo period and no requirement for users to register to read content.
What is an APC?
To provide open access, Premier Science journals charge publication fees for each article published. These fees cover the expenses incurred by publication, including the peer review process, journal production and publication, and hosting and archiving fees. Fees vary by article type. The APC is charged on acceptance of the article and should be paid upon receipt of the invoice by the author, funding agency or institution. Payment must be received in full for the article to be published.
- Premier Science does not charge submission fees, membership fees, page or colour charges.
- APC payment eligibility or waiver status does not influence editorial decision-making.
How much is the APC?
The usual APC is £500 for original research and review articles. Its £250 for letters and perspective style content. However there are discounts and waivers currently in operation. There are no submission fees or artwork charges. Publishing fees or waiver status does not influence editorial decision making.
Premier Science offers full or partial equitable waivers for accepted articles from low-income and middle-income economies. Eligibility is based on the Research4Life eligibility criteria. Countries listed in Group A are eligible for the full waiver and countries listed in Group B (including Ukraine) are eligible for the partial (50%) waiver. We do make exceptions to the policy on a case-by-case basis. APCs are determined by the manuscript’s country of origin or the Authors’ institutional location information provided during submission. To avoid gaming the system, the higher APC would be selected. Authors can visit the Research4Life criteria page to determine eligibility at www.research4life.org/access/criteria/.
What does an APC cover?
The APC covers a range of work streams as follows:
- Editorial work – we partner with authors, reviewers and editors to assess scholarly work, manage the peer-review process, journal administration and screening of submissions.
- Production process – copyediting, typesetting and and author proofing.
- Marketing and promotion of journal content – including social media and email marketing.
- Customer service – to wrap around all the processes above, respond to authors and readers.
- Technical infrastructure investment and development – to ensure research integrity checks, archiving, indexing and discoverability of content.
Do we offer waivers on APCs?
Premier Science offers full or partial equitable waivers for accepted articles from low-income and middle-income economies. Eligibility is based on the Research4Life eligibility criteria. Countries listed in Group A are eligible for the full waiver and countries listed in Group B are eligible for the partial (50%) waiver. The waiver is automatically applied based on the Corresponding Author’s country information provided during submission.
To determine your eligibility, visit the Research4Life criteria page at https://www.research4life.org/access/criteria/.
