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Scholarly Communications at Mount Sinai: Types of Open Access

Information for the Mount Sinai community on issues related to scholarly communications, including author rights and copyright, research evaluation, open access, and NIH publication support

Types of Open Access Journals

Types of Open Access Journals:

Green – refers to self-archiving generally of the pre or post-print in repositories. There are three basic version types that can be self-archived in repositories:

  1. Pre-Prints – The author's copy of article before it’s been reviewed by the publisher, or pre-reviewed
  2. Post-Prints – The author's copy of article after it’s been reviewed and corrected, but before the publisher has formatted it for publication, or post-reviewed. Also called an accepted manuscript.

Gold – refers to articles in fully accessible open access journals or one that are in hybrid journals, which are subscription journals with open access to individual articles usually when a fee is paid to the publisher or journal by the author, the author's organization, or the research funder.

Diamond– refers to open access journals that do not require a fee to publish; also called sponsored or platinum journals. Fees are paid by an institution, grants, philanthropy, or other sources.

Bronze– refers to journals where the license or copyright is not clear; may only be free to read.

Sources: Laura Burtle, "Types of Open Access," Georgia State University Library, 2017; Robert Harington, "Diamond Open Access, Societies and Mission," Scholarly Kitchen, 2017; Jon Brock, "'Bronze' Open Access Supersedes Green and Gold," Nature Index, 2018.