Open Access & Self-Archiving
Open Access & Self-Archiving
Open access refers to free, unrestricted online access to research outputs such as journal articles and books. Open access content is open to all, with no access fees.
BDJ Open is a fully Open Access journal, which makes your research openly accessible. Publishing your article fully open access, often referred to as gold open access, via the open access route on a publisher’s platform, makes the final version of an article freely and permanently accessible for everyone, immediately after publication. Copyright for the article is retained by the authors and most of the permission barriers are removed. Authors (or their institutions where relevant) are required to pay an article processing charge (APC) to facilitate open access publication.
Authors may need to take specific actions to achieve compliance with funder and institutional open access (OA) mandates. If your research is supported by a funder that requires immediate OA (e.g. according to Plan S principles) then you can publish via the gold OA route with BDJ Open, and we will direct you to the compliant route where possible.
Open access licensing
Open access articles are published under a CC BY license (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). Under Creative Commons, authors retain copyright in their articles. The CC BY license allows for maximum dissemination and re-use of open access materials and is preferred by many research funding bodies. Under this license, users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) and remix (adapt) the contribution including for commercial purposes, providing they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor (read full legal code). All Springer Nature journals with an open access option offer intergovernmental organisation (IGO) versions of Creative Commons licences on request, where required by the author’s employer.
Visit our open research site for more information about Creative Commons licensing.
Post-acceptance
The corresponding author will be prompted to complete the relevant Open Access forms following acceptance. The corresponding author must complete an Open Access License to Publish (OA LTP) form on behalf of all authors, and will be contacted to arrange payment of the associated Article Processing Charge (APC). The current APC for BDJ Open can be found here.
Please note this process must be completed prior to publication and failure to do so will result in delay of publication.
Government employees from the United States, Canada and the UK who wish to publish open access are required to complete the open access form relevant to them.
Self-archiving and digital preservation
Self-archiving of Open Access articles
BDJ Open authors are encouraged to deposit the final published PDF in their institutional repository or any suitable subject repository on publication. Authors should provide a link from the deposited version to the URL of the published article on the journal's website; in all cases, the requirement to link to the journal’s website is designed to protect the integrity and authenticity of the scientific record, with the online published version on the journal’s website clearly identified as the definitive version of record.
Authors are advised to check their funders' deposition requirements to ensure compliance. Read our policy compliance FAQs to learn about how authors can ensure they meet funder self-archiving requirements.
Publisher deposition of Open Access articles
Springer Nature automatically deposits open access articles in PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PubMed Central (EPMC) on publication, if the article meets the PMC deposition guidelines.
Please note that there may be an interval of a few weeks between publication and the appearance of an article in PubMed Central and Europe PubMed Central, depending on the time required for PubMed Central to process the deposit and for PMC articles to be mirrored to Europe PubMed Central.
Authors are advised to check their funders' deposition requirements to ensure compliance. Read our policy compliance FAQs to learn about how authors can ensure they meet all their funders’ self-archiving requirements. If you believe your Open Access article is eligible to be deposited to PubMed Central but has not been, please contact us, or you can submit an Open Access article directly to PubMed Central or Europe PubMed Central through their submission systems: PubMed Central and Europe PubMed Central.
Digital preservation
Springer Nature ensures that publications are preserved and available for future scholars, researchers, and students. Find out more about archiving agreements with Digital Preservation organisations here.
Availability of research data
Springer Nature helps authors make their research data as open as possible by supporting practices for sharing and archiving data. Find out more about our policies and services here.
