Ownership of copyrights in two models and its implications

As discussed in Section 2a, traditionally, when submitting a scholarly article to a renowned journal the author relinquishes his rights to the publisher as a condition for publication, and access to this research is typically restricted. Sometimes authors are able to negotiate with publishers as a part of the negotiation process and sometimes it is not possible.

If an author wishes to retain his or her copyright, tools such as an authors’ addendum may be helpful in articulating negotiation points. The BTAA Author’s Copyright Contract Addendum is an example. As a part of the publishing agreements, authors can sometimes negotiate with publishers for rights to use, reproduce, distribute, display, perform, create derivative works from, revise, or republish their works, for scholarly and teaching purposes or for depositing their work in a repository.

However, fully open access journals offers broader rights for authors and better global accessibility of copyrighted works. Fully open access journals generally operate on the basis of non-exclusive licenses with authors who retain their copyrights. Open access journals may charge an article publishing charge (APC). When an author publishes in an open access journal, the publisher has the legal right to make the article available broadly to the world under the conditions of the publication agreement.

Author Publishing Charges (APC)

A number of journals charge fees to authors in one form or another. Pre-publication fees, such as a submission fee or membership fee, are less common. Researchers are more likely to encounter post-publications fees, such as an article processing charge or page fee.

Traditional journals are solely based on a reader-pays model, in which institutional libraries typically pay for access to content. However, open access journals that support unrestricted access and reuse are always based on the author-pays model. In other words, an author may have to pay for submitting and for publishing an article in an open access journal, but may not have to do so in a subscription based journal. Because the costs of the editorial, peer review, advertising and publication processes are usually compensated through paywalled premium content, subscription fees from individuals and libraries or subsidy by a journal’s affiliated foundation or society.

Generally, in an open access journal the fees provides both retrospective and prospective coverage, including of peer review management by the editorial staff or board, manuscript preparation (e.g., copyediting), journal production (e.g., layout), open access online publication and hosting, indexing (e.g., in PubMed), and archiving.

Article Processing Charges are usually applied based on the following criteria, i) Journal quality ii) Journals editorial and technical processes iii) Competitive considerations iv) Market conditions and v)Other revenue streams associated with the journal.

Fee Waivers to support researchers

However, both traditional and open access publications that entail author publishing charges do not mandate payment of fees in full.  This is due to the discounts related to institutional membership programs, or the authors’ society membership, or waivers of service (such as if in-house copyediting is not needed). Moreover, the author need not have to pay full or even discounted fees due to waivers based on either financial hardship or the authors’ country of origin’s economic status or due to coverage by the authors’ institution, department, or funder/grant.

Waivers based on the country of origin

Elsevier automatically applies APC waivers or discounts to those articles in gold open access journals for which all author groups are based in a country eligible for the Research4Life program. When publishing in fully open access journals, it provides full fee waivers for authors from 69 countries (Group A) and 50% waivers for authors from 57 countries (Group B).

In fact, for open access publication, only 5% to 12% of fees are ever paid using personal funds.

Implications for scholars based in India

Research scholars pursuing masters or doctorate in India, interested in publishing their scholarly works in a journal in India will usually have to pay an Author Publishing Charge. The APC can range between 1000Rs to 30000Rs depending on the indexing journal.

Although traditional journals like, Indian Journal of Medical Research allows researchers to submit and publish a research article without an Author Publishing Charge. And many other open access journals also provide a possibility of free publication if the quality of the research and article is top notch.

Types of OA

Gold OA

Gold OA means that authors make the final published version of record permanently, freely available and to be read without restrictions, immediately upon publication by the publisher, at the point of publication (i.e. the journal itself, not in a repository). Gold Open Access usually requires payment of an article processing charge (APC), which may be paid by authors or subsidised by a third party such as a funding council. However, payment is not a necessary characteristic of Gold Open Access; it simply means that the article is free for readers to access from the journal itself under a Creative Commons license.

Green OA

Another way to reap the benefits of Open Access without incurring a fee is by using Green OA which means making a version of the manuscript freely available in a repository. An embargo period is usually set by the publisher, such as 6, 12 or even 24 months. No additional charges are made to publish as Green OA.

iii) Delayed Open Access – As the name implies, some traditional subscription-based journals allow the scholarly articles to be made available freely on the web after a certain embargo period set by the publisher. The reason for the access delay is to provide eventual access to all would-be users while still requiring the institutions of researchers who need immediate access to keep paying the subscriptions that cover the costs of publication.

Bronze OA

Bronze articles are free to read at the publisher’s website but without an explicitly stated Creative Commons license that grants the user any other rights. There may be a delay between publication and availability to read, and often articles can be published without charge of an APC to the author.

Gratis OA

This access refers to the publisher optionally making a paper free to read at no charge to the author – usually for marketing and promotional activities. The Gratis Open Access may not be permanent. Copyright/licencing is still determined by traditional formats. This is not ‘true’ Open Access.

Libre OA

This is a blanket term for ‘true’ Open Access; where the paper is made available under an open licence, allowing it to be shared and reused, depending on which licence is used.

Diamond OA

Diamond open access refers to open access journals that are free for readers to access and for authors to publish in. Funding is not charged to the authors and are often community-driven and supported by institutions or by national or regional infrastructure.

viii) Hybrid – A traditional subscription journal which allows authors to make their papers Open Access is called Hybrid OA journal. This status typically requires the payment of a publication fee to the publisher in order to publish an article open access, in addition to the continued payment of subscriptions to access all other content. Typically a significantly higher price (relative to dedicated Gold OA journals) has to be paid.

Types of licences

The Creative Commons (CC) licences provide a standardised way to grant permissions for open access articles. There are six types of CC licence and all of them require the user to attribute the original work back to the author. Every license helps creators, also called licensors to retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work.

Attribution: CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the original work, even commercially, as long as they credit the authors for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. This licence is recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Attribution-ShareAlike: CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon the original work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the authors and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on the original will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

Attribution-NoDerivs: CC BY-ND

This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to the original creators.

Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon the original work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge the creator and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon the original work non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download the original works and share them with others as long as they credit the creator, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.