Introduction
Gold Open Access
Waivers
Archiving policy & Green Open Access
Open Access: General FAQs
Hybrid Open Access FAQs for Authors
Hybrid Open Access FAQs for Librarians
Funders
Data Policy
Sharing and Public Posting of Articles
Introduction
As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Biochemical Society, we are fully committed to the open science agenda, and to serving the needs of our authors, readers, researchers, society members and librarians. You can find the Biochemical Society’s policy on Open Science here. Portland Press offers several Open Access (OA) options, including funder-compliant routes to publishing, in all of our journals.
There are two routes to making your work OA:
Gold Open Access |
Green Open Access |
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| *Portland Press has adopted the ALPSP/NISO Recommended Practices for Journal Article Versions (the VoR and AM). A Submitted Manuscript Under Review that is accepted for publication becomes an Accepted Manuscript (AM) at the point of acceptance. A Proof that is corrected and published becomes a Version of Record (VoR). For further information, please visit http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/RP-8-2008.pdf | |
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Gold Open Access
All of our subscription journals offer authors the choice to pay a charge (article publishing charge or APC), allowing the final published article (the definitive Version of Record/VoR) to be published Open Access (OA). This makes the published article freely available online from the journal site, and ensures that most types of distribution and re-use will be permitted without restrictions or charges.
Authors have the option to choose the Gold OA route for their manuscripts submitted to any of our subscription journals (hybrid OA). While the below serves as a quick overview, we have detailed information and FAQs on our hybrid OA offering for authors and for librarians.
We also publish two fully open access journals: Bioscience Reports and Neuronal Signaling.
Selection of Gold OA for a manuscript has no bearing whatsoever on the editorial decisions and the outcome of peer review. The decision to publish an article is governed entirely by the peer-review process and our Editors. The Journals’ Editors and Reviewers will not know whether an author has opted to pay for Gold OA. Payment to facilitate Gold OA is only collected after (if) a manuscript has been formally accepted for publication.
Portland Press Open Access overview:
Journal |
Type of OA |
Fees/APC for Gold OA1 |
Special rates for members and subscribers1 |
Licensing2 & copyright3 |
Publisher deposits final VoR to PubMed Central |
|
Hybrid – Gold OA is optional |
£1750 |
£1500 |
©Authors |
Yes |
|
|
Hybrid – Gold OA is optional |
£1750 |
£1500 |
©Authors CC BY NC-ND (or CC BY if mandated by funder) |
Yes |
|
|
Hybrid – Gold OA is optional |
£1750 |
£1500 |
©Authors |
Yes |
|
|
Hybrid – Gold OA is optional |
£1750 |
£1500 |
©Authors CC BY NC-ND (or CC BY if mandated by funder) |
Yes |
|
| Emerging Topics in Life Sciences | Hybrid – Gold OA is optional | £1250 $2225 €1885 |
£875 $1555 €1320 |
©Authors CC BY NC-ND (or CC BY if mandated by funder) |
Articles will be deposited once the journal has been accepted by PMC |
|
Full OA – all authors pay for Gold OA |
£1100 |
£880 |
© Authors CC BY |
Yes |
|
| Neuronal Signaling | Full OA – all authors pay for Gold OA |
£1250 |
£875 $1555 |
© Authors CC BY |
Articles will be deposited once the journal has been accepted by PMC |
|
1Fees for Hybrid OA: Our Hybrid OA charges are £1750; US$3500; €2590 per article. 3Copyright: Authors of Portland Press journals retain copyright and assign us, the Publisher, an exclusive Licence to Publish. This is the case for all published articles regardless of whether they are OA or subscription articles. For all OA articles, the Licence to Publish assigned to us by Authors will point to the relevant Creative Commons licence (as described above) to guide use and re-use terms for readers and authors alike. |
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Waivers
To support and boost bioscience in the developing world, the Biochemical Society, and its publishing subsidiary Portland Press, go above and beyond the existing HINARI programme and offer either completely free or discounted Gold Open Access (OA) publication to authors from low-income countries.
- Waivers (free OA publication): Authors from 71 low-income countries (as defined by the HINARI 'Group A' list) can have their accepted papers published via Gold OA free of charge
- Discounts: Authors from a further 45 countries (on the HINARI 'Group B' list) can receive a discount on their article publishing charge (APC)
- Discounted rates for the Group B list are as per the 'special rates' described in the table above, namely:
- £1500/$3000/€2200 for Hybrid OA in the following: Biochemical Journal, Clinical Science, Biochemical Society Transactions and Essays in Biochemistry
- £880 for Gold OA in the full OA journal, Bioscience Reports and £875 for Gold OA in the full OA journal, Neuronal Signaling
Qualifying authors are requested to email production@portlandpress.com at the time of article submission in order to take advantage of free OA publication or OA at a discounted rate.
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Archiving policy & Green Open Access
Subscription articles: The final published Version of Record (VoR) for subscription articles may not be shared or posted to institutional repositories, personal webpages, blogs, listservs, ResearchGate or any other websites that are not password-protected. Authors are not normally permitted to share their articles (VoR) on any website that is open to the public. Please refer to our policy on the sharing of articles here.
Authors’ Accepted Manuscripts (AMs) can be archived in an institutional repository after an embargo of 12 months; however, this does not extend to subject repositories. See also Green Open Access (OA), below.
Green OA: Portland Press allows deposits for all Accepted Manuscripts in institutional repositories after an embargo period of 12 months.
Authors and librarians are invited to archive Accepted Manuscripts (not the final published PDF which is the definitive Version of Record of the article, but the manuscript that was accepted for publication following peer review) in institutional repositories, 12 months after publication of the VoR.
Funder exception: Deposits of the AM to subject repositories, such as PubMed Central, are only permitted if this is mandated by the funder.
When archiving, please:
- Make clear that this is not the final peer-reviewed Version of Record;
- Include a link to the Version of Record on the journal website;
- Ensure that the journal carrying the final published version of the article is attributed.
Archiving/sharing of Gold OA papers: As an APC will have been paid to make the final article OA, Authors (or indeed anyone) may share the final published PDF/Version of Record of Gold OA articles on any websites including blogs, personal pages, institutional repositories and subject archives. We encourage Authors and others to include a link to the published article on the journal page when re-posting, sharing or re-using an article (in whole or in part) elsewhere. Please check the licence of the published article as commercial re-use and adaptations will be subject to permissions in some cases.
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Open Access: General FAQs
What is open access (OA)?
- Ability to access, use and reproduce published material as per the terms of the licence it is available under
- Distinct from ‘free’ which covers simply the ability to view content
There are two 'types' of OA content: Gold and Green - a description of these is available here.
Which funding bodies mandate open access publishing?
See the Funders section.
Does Portland Press publish an open access journal?
Bioscience Reports and Neuronal Signaling are fully open access.
All other Portland Press journals are 'hybrids'. Hybrid journals contain both open access and subscription papers.
What open access (OA) options does Portland Press offer?
Gold OA, which gives immediate open access to the final published version of the article.
Green OA, allows manuscripts to be put in repositories after 12 months.
Hybrid OA (the choice to publish OA within a subscription journal) is offered for all journals and Portland Press also publishes one Full OA journal where all articles are published Gold OA.
Are there charges associated with publishing an article OA?
Yes
- Gold OA in the hybrid journals costs £1750
- Gold OA in Bioscience Reports costs £1100 and £1250 in Neuronal Signaling (mandatory)
- Green OA is free, but archiving cannot be carried out until after 12 months.
There are no page or colour charges for any journal.
Are any discounts available?
Yes, these apply for:
- Subscribers
- Biochemical Society members
- Authors from low-income countries as defined by HINARI.
For more information on discounts see the overview table at the top of this page and the waivers section above.
What open access licences are used?
All Gold OA papers are offered under the CC BY NC ND licence except where CC BY publication is mandated by a funder, in which case authors are offered a CC BY licence.
The terms of our permission policy apply for the final published versions of any archived/Green OA papers.
Authors always retain the copyright to their work, and Portland Press retains an exclusive licence to publish the work, regardless of the OA option.
Does the choice of any open access option have any effect on editorial decisions?
No.
If I opt for Green open access, what are the rules?
Portland Press only allows posting/archiving of the authors' Accepted Manuscript (AM) after an embargo of 12 months. For more details please see the Archiving Policy. Also note that if a funder requires that Accepted Manuscripts become available within 6 months then the Gold Open Access route should be selected to ensure immediate Open Access and continued funder-compliance.
Hybrid Open Access FAQs for Authors
What is Hybrid Open Access (OA)?
Hybrid OA allows you to have your article published as an OA paper in a subscription journal. You will need to pay an APC (article publishing charge) in order to make the final published article (your Version of Record or VoR) freely available immediately on publication.
When will I be given the option to select Hybrid OA for making my article freely available online?
All Portland Press journals offer a Hybrid OA option. You will be asked whether you would like to pay for providing access to your article online after the peer-review process is complete.
If you elect to have your paper published OA, you (the corresponding author, unless otherwise specified) will be contactde about payment only after (if and when) your article has been accepted for publication.
Will the payment of a fee have any influence on whether my article is accepted for publication?
All manuscripts submitted to journals published by Portland Press will receive the same fair, thorough and fast peer-review process. The Journals’ Editors and Reviewers will not know whether an author has opted to pay for Hybrid OA; selection of OA at the time of submitting a revised paper will have no bearing whatsoever on the editorial process. You will only be contacted about payment to facilitate OA after the peer review and evaluation of your paper is complete, and if your manuscript is formally accepted for publication.
How much will I have to pay?
For corresponding authors from organizations that hold a subscription to a Portland Press journal at the time that their manuscripts have been accepted for publication the fee is £1500; US$3000; €2200.
For corresponding authors who are members of the Biochemical Society, the membership charge is £1500; US$3000; €2200.
For all other authors the fee is: £1750; US$3500; €2590.
What is my APC for? What do article publishing charges cover?
When an article is published under the Gold OA route, no revenue is made from subscriptions, and costs do need to be covered in other ways. Portland Press' costs include:
- journal hosting platform
- the cost of considering and peer-reviewing content that is rejected from the journal
- editors who assure that content published is of a suitable quality and good standard
- retro-digitization and archiving
- investing in innovation for the future of scholarly publishing
- training of staff and editors around publication ethics and publishing processes
- colour publication, even in print, offered free to authors
This is not an exhaustive list, but an article on The Scholarly Kitchen covers all the things that publishers do that OA publishing and APCs support.
Will I have to pay a submission fee?
No.
Are there any additional page charges?
No.
Will I have to pay for colour?
Where colour aids understanding of the data, Portland Press does not charge authors for publishing images and figures in colour.
Will I get a discount if my organization has a current subscription?
Yes, if your organization has an active subscription to a Portland Press journal.
How can I find out whether my institution has a current combined or online-only subscription?
Please check with your librarian about whether you have an active subscription to the journal you wish to publish in. You could also recommend a journal to your librarian in order to maximise the chances of you qualifying for a discount when publishing OA.
Will an institutional print subscription entitle me to the discounted fee?
No, only a current online or combined (print and online) subscription will entitle you to the discount.
Will I get a discount if I am a member of the Biochemical Society?
Yes, if any of the authors is a Full or Early Career member and if this information is provided on our journal submission system, discounted OA charges will apply. The savings made on discounted OA publication are far more than the cost of membership in most cases, and so, signing up as a member of the Society will often save you money even if you only publish one OA paper in a Portland Press journal. Read more about Society membership here.
What if I cannot pay?
If you cannot afford to pay for OA, your article will be available via the reader-pays model as a subscription article. Note that if payment for an OA article is not made within 30 days of the time the APC is charged then Portland Press reserves the right to apply the subscription barrier such that your article will no longer be freely available as an OA paper.
Will publication of my manuscript be delayed if payment is not received by the time it is accepted for publication?
Portland Press constantly endeavours to keep handling times to the minimum. The processing of your article will not be delayed in any way at any stage owing to a failure to pay; however, the Version of Record (VoR) of your accepted article will revert to the reader-pays (subscription) model if payment is not received within 30 days of the time the APC is charged.
What licence will my hybrid OA manuscript be published under?
Hybrid OA articles will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial-No Derivatives Licence (CC BY NC-ND) unless a funding body mandates OA publication under a ‘CC BY’ licence, in which case a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY) will apply.
The CC BY NC-ND licence permits unrestricted use and sharing of the article in its entirety, although any commercial re-use and/or creation of derivative works or adaptations require permission.
The CC BY licence permits unrestricted use, re-use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is cited appropriately.
Authors and readers alike will be able to use and reproduce hybrid OA articles as per the terms of the Creative Commons licence under which the article is published.
What about copyright?
The copyright for all articles published in Portland Press journals always remains with the Author(s) regardless of whether the article is OA or not. Portland Press Limited will acknowledge this in the copyright line that appears on each article.
How will readers know which articles are freely accessible?
OA articles will be clearly identifiable via an ‘unlock’ icon in the Table of Contents and on the article itself. Readers arriving at an article from PubMed/MEDLINE® will be directed straight to the full text of the article rather than the abstract page.
In addition, PDFs of OA articles will carry clear symbols to denote OA status and the XML of OA articles will be tagged so that their OA status is also machine-readable. This makes the OA status (as well as the licensing information) clear for any type of use and/or re-use.
How may authors use Hybrid OA articles?
Hybrid OA entitles you and your co-authors (and indeed readers as well) to post the PDF version of the final Version of Record (VoR), on your own or institutional website, or to free public servers in the relevant subject area.
In addition, all forms of re-use, republication and distribution are all permitted, including sharing the full text on social media and elsewhere online, as long as the original article is properly cited and, in most cases, as long as this is not for direct commercial gain.
We encourage and request authors and readers to include a link to the published article on the journal site wherever an OA article is re-used or re-posted.
What about PubMed Central?
Portland Press will post all hybrid OA articles to PubMed Central as a service to authors and permit their inclusion in PubMed Central mirror sites.
What about authors from developing countries?
Portland Press supports HINARI run by the World Health Organization and part of the Research4Life partnership. This means that low-income countries can already obtain free (or very low-cost) access to its journals. In addition to this, Portland Press also offers discounts and/or waivers for OA publication - for information on this, please see the Waivers section.
Will there be any pricing adjustments for subscribing libraries as a result of hybrid OA?
We will not charge twice for the same articles. Any increases in subscription prices to our journals take into account other sources of income to the journal, including hybrid OA.
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Hybrid Open Access FAQs for Librarians
What is Hybrid OA?
Hybrid OA allows an author to have their article published as an OA paper in a subscription journal. Authors will need to pay a fee in order to make the final published article (the Version of Record or VoR) freely available immediately on publication.
Which Portland Press journals offer Hybrid OA?
As per the Portland Press OA overview table all subscription journals published by Portland Press offer this option.
How much will an author have to pay?
For Biochemical Society members, and for authors based at a subscribing organization with an active subscription a Portland Press journal at the time that their manuscripts have been accepted for publication, the Hybrid OA fee will be £1500 (US$3000; €2200).
The fee for non-members and/or authors from organizations that do not hold a current subscription to the relevant journal will be £1750 (US$3500; €2590).
What is the article publishing charge (APC) for? What do APCs cover?
When an article is published under the Gold OA route, no revenue is made from subscriptions, and costs need to be covered in other ways. Portland Press' costs include:
- journal hosting platform
- the cost of considering and peer-reviewing content that is rejected from the journal
- editors who assure that content published is of a suitable quality and good standard
- retro-digitization and archiving
- investing in innovation for the future of scholarly publishing
- training of staff and editors around publication ethics and publishing processes
- colour publication, even in print, offered free to authors
This is not an exhaustive list, but an article on The Scholarly Kitchen covers all the things that publishers do that OA publishing and APCs support.
How can my institution qualify for the discounted APC fees for all Portland Press titles?
A Portland Press site licence will allow your institution to have full online access to all titles published by Portland Press, and authors from the institution will automatically be entitled to the discounted Hybrid OA rate across all the journals.
To discuss how a site licence can benefit your organization, please contact licensing@portlandpress.com
Will there be any pricing adjustments for subscribing libraries as a result of Hybrid OA?
We will not charge twice for the same articles. Any increases in subscription prices to our journals take into account other sources of income to the journal, including hybrid OA.
How will readers know which articles are OA?
Such articles will be clearly identifiable via an ‘unlock’ icon in the Table of Contents and on the article itself. Readers arriving at an article from PubMed/MEDLINE® will be directed straight to the full-text of the article rather than the abstract page.
In addition, PDFs of OA articles will carry clear symbols to denote OA status and the XML of OA articles will be tagged so that their OA status is also machine-readable. This makes the OA status (as well as the licensing information) clear for any type of use and/or re-use.
How may authors use Hybrid OA articles published in a Portland Press journal?
Hybrid OA entitles authors / co-authors / librarians to post the PDF of the final Version of Record (VoR) on any websites including institutional websites, or free public servers in the relevant subject area.
In addition, re-use, republication, sharing and distribution are all permitted, including sharing the full text on social media and elsewhere online as long as the original article is cited, and, in most cases, as long as this is not for direct commercial gain.
We encourage and request authors and librarians to include a link to the published article on the journal site wherever an OA article is re-used or re-posted.
Portland Press will post all Hybrid OA articles to PubMed Central, as a service to authors, and permit inclusion of the articles in PubMed Central mirror sites.
Portland Press journals are compliant with all funder OA mandates, including NIH, Wellcome Trust and RCUK. See ROARMAP for a fuller list.
How will Hybrid OA affect the author's copyright?
Authors for Portland Press journals retain copyright and assign us, the Publisher, an exclusive Licence to Publish. This is the case for all published articles regardless of whether they are OA or subscription articles. For all OA articles, the Authors retain copyright and the Licence to Publish assigned to us by Authors will point to the relevant Creative Commons licence (described below) to guide use and re-use by readers and authors alike.
Attribution Non Commercial-No Derivatives CC BY NC-ND
This licence permits use, re-use and sharing of the article as long as: (i) the author and source are credited; (ii) the material is not being used for commercial gain; and (iii) no adaptations are made to the original. In other words, this licence prohibits commercial use and adaptations, and both these forms of use/re-use require separate permission. In this sense, this licence is protective of both authors’ and the publisher’s best interests while still ensuring paywall-free access to all who wish to read and share the content.
Attribution CC BY
This licence will be used where a funder mandates OA. This licence lets authors and others distribute, remix, tweak and build upon the published article, even commercially, as long as they credit the author and the source. This is the most accommodating of all the licences offered, and is compliant with mandates and OA policies of funding bodies such as the RCUK.
What about self-archiving?
All authors are free to use the Accepted Manuscript (the version that has been accepted for publication after Peer Review) for self-archiving on their own website or in their institutional repository, 12 months after the publication date, provided
- It is made clear that this is not the final peer-reviewed Version of Record
- That a link is provided to the Version of Record on the journal site and
- That the journal carrying the final published article is attributed.
Archiving to subject repositories such as PubMed Central are only permitted if this has been mandated by a funder. In cases where a funder mandates deposit of the Accepted Manuscript, the embargo is still 12 months. If the funder's OA policy mandates that the Accepted Manuscript be posted within 6 months then Authors need to use the Gold Open-Access route to facilitate immediate Open Access of the final published article in order to remain compliant.
What about authors from developing countries?
Portland Press supports HINARI run by the World Health Organization. This means that low-income countries can already obtain free (or very low-cost) access to its journals. In addition to this, Portland Press also offers discounts and/or waivers for OA publication - for information on this, please see the Waivers section.
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Funders
By providing Gold Open Access (OA) publication of the final article (under a CC BY licence when this is mandated by a funder), and, for our hybrid journals, by allowing archiving of the accepted manuscript with 12-month embargoes, Portland Press facilitates funder-compliant routes to publication for several funders, including:
National Institutes of Health (NIH – USA)
National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC – Australia)
Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Research Councils UK (RCUK - UK)
Medical Research Council (MRC - UK)
National Environmenta Research Council (NERC - UK)
Wellcome Trust (UK)
Cancer Research UK (CRUK - UK)
British Heart Foundation (BHF -UK)
Charity Open Access Fund (COAF - UK)
See ROARMAP for a fuller list of funders and their OA policies. If you are mandated to publish OA and find that our policies do not permit a funder-compliant route to publication, please let us know on production@portlandpress.com
Data Policy
Portland Press and the Biochemical Society encourage Authors to share their data and upload raw data and datasets to open data repositories on formal acceptance of their article for publication. We do not stipulate a particular repository but encourage Authors to find a suitable repository by visiting http://www.re3data.org/.