Open Access

Open Access allows individuals and institutions unrestricted access to content published in scholarly, peer-reviewed publications. Unlike the traditional subscription-based publishing models, open access content is available without having to purchase or subscribe to the book or journal in which the content is published.

Gold Open Access - Gold open access allows the author to publish their article in a fully open access journal. The author or funding body pays an article processing charge in order to make the content fully available on the Open Access journal's website alongside all the articles published within the journal. With this option, the published article is immediately made freely available, without any embargo.

Green Open Access - Green open access can vary from publisher-to-publisher. Through IGI Global's Fair Use Policy, authors may post the final typeset PDF (which includes the title page, table of contents and other front materials, and the copyright statement) of their chapter or article (NOT THE ENTIRE BOOK OR JOURNAL ISSUE), on the author or editor's secure personal website and/or their university repository site. However, they cannot post the article, chapter, full book publication, or journal issue on general open access sites for free download and distribution, such as ResearchGate, arXiv, Academia.edu, SSRN, or society-sponsored sites.

Hybrid Open Access - Hybrid open access allows the author to choose whether to publish their paper open access or as part of the journal's subscription-based content. If the author opts to publish the paper as open access, the author or funding body pays an article processing charge in order to make the paper freely available online alongside the subscription-based content. With this option, the published article is immediately made freely available, without any embargo.

In order to better serve the academic community and meet the needs of its authors, IGI Global is pleased to offer a hybrid open access model for all of its established subscription-based journals.

View all IGI Global journal articles that have been published under open access here.

How Does It Work?

Hybrid open access allows the author to select whether to publish their paper via the traditional, subscription-based model, or as an open access article which will be made freely available upon publication. If the author selects the open access option, an article processing charge (currently $1,500 per article) must be paid by either the author or a funding body. The article processing charge covers the costs associated with publishing the article and in turn, allows the published article to be freely read online, distributed, and reused.

Articles published via the traditional, subscription-based model (not open access) do not require the payment of an article processing charge as the publication costs associated with these articles are covered by the revenue generated through journal subscriptions.

Licensing

All IGI Global hybrid open access journals offer authors the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode licensing arrangement for all open access articles. When publishing an article as open access, the copyright remains solely with the author of the paper.

Author's Warranty

All authors, regardless of whether their work is to be published as subscription-based or open access, are required to sign an author's warranty stating that the materials are original and unpublished elsewhere. IGI Global cannot publish any material, open access or subscription-based, which has been previously published.

Article Processing Charges

For all IGI Global journals offering hybrid open access, an article processing charge of $1,500 must be paid by the author or funding body in order to have the paper published as open access. The payment must be received after the paper has undergone the double-blind peer review and has been accepted for publication. The article cannot be published by IGI Global until payment has been received.

Why is an article processing charge necessary?

In the traditional subscription-based model, the cost to the publisher to produce each article is recovered through the revenue generated by journal subscriptions. Because open access articles are made freely available, article processing charges are necessary in order to recover the costs to the publisher to produce the article.

What does the article processing charge cover?

Article processing charges defray the cost to the publisher of preparing the article for publication. This includes the cost to develop and maintain the digital tools used to manage the manuscript submission and review process, typesetting the publication, online hosting, and overall production of the article.

When is payment due?

Article processing charge payment will be required after the article has undergone the double-blind peer review process and has been accepted for publication. Please note that IGI Global cannot schedule the article for publication or publish the article until payment has been received.

IGI Global's InfoSci-Journal Open Access Fee Waiver (Offset Model) Initiative

For any library that invests in an IGI Global journal database, IGI Global will match the library’s investment with a fund of equal value to go toward subsidizing the open access article processing charge (APC) for their students, faculty, and staff at that institution when their work is submitted and accepted under open access into an IGI Global journal housed within that collection.*

For authors from low- and middle-income countries, IGI Global automatically waives 100% or 50% of the APC depending on the author's affiliated country. In addition, IGI Global honors article processing charges for all authors if one or more authors are based in a low to middle-income countries, even if one or more of the co-authors are based in higher income countries.

Please note that all article processing charge waivers are processed by IGI Global's administrative staff and not the journal's editorial team in order to maintain the integrity of the peer review process. We kindly ask that authors do not disclose any information regarding article processing charge waivers and discounts to the journal Editor-in-Chief or the Editorial Advisory Board.

Eligible Countries

IGI Global automatically waives 100% of the article processing charge for authors based in any of the following countries:

IGI Global automatically provides authors with a 50% discount if one or more authors on the article are based in any of the following countries: