Updated 2 December 2016
IOP Publishing is now a member of CHOR Inc. the US based charity providing a sustainable solution for agencies and publishers to deliver public access to published articles reporting on funded research in the United States.
Authors are now able to include funding information with their submissions to IOP Publishing journals. IOP Publishing is using the Open Funder Registry to enable the transparent tracking of funding and publications by organizations responding to government public access policies.
22 of the top UK Universities are taking part in a three year pilot to offset article publication charges against subscriptions fees with IOP Publishing. Information about IOP Publishing's UK open access pilot for authors and libraries is available on IOPscience.
A new referee reward programme is now available that gives referees a 10% credit towards the cost of publishing on a gold open access basis when they review an article.
IOP Publishing is committed to providing long-term, sustainable access to quality scientific research for everyone, whilst maintaining high value, trustworthy author and reader services which enhance scientific communication and progress.
IOP Publishing was an early adopter of the gold open access model. We launched New Journal of Physics in 1998 in partnership with the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. Now in 2016, we have a wide range of open access options in place across our portfolio.
We offer the research community choice by providing both gold and green open access as well as liberal copyright licences to ensure that our authors can comply with funder and institutional policies on open access.
We adjust our subscription prices based on the revenue we receive for article publication charges in order that the library community receives a fair deal. We are also part of several pilot programmes to explore long term sustainable funding mechanisms for open access.
IOP Publishing's open access policy offers:
Open Access refund policy
IOP Publishing endeavours to publish every open access article on the terms agreed with the authors and without delay. If authors or their institutions are unhappy with any aspect of the open access publishing service they should contact the journal or the dedicated open access support team (openaccess@iop.org). Every effort will be made to respond to any deficiencies in service without delay. Where service fails to meet our high standards, authors may be offered, on request and at the publisher's discretion, a refund of part of the Article Publication Charge (APC) or a credit towards future publications.
The team at IOP Publishing have prepared a short guide for researchers which answers the questions we commonly get asked by our authors about open access. The guide includes a list of the ten key things you need to consider when publishing on an open access basis.
IOP Publishing's copyright expert has created a quick guide to the essential things you need to know about copyright and publishing your research, especially the common licences used for gold open access publication.
IOP Publishing is currently participating in a number of open access pilots as well as running our own directly with the scientific community. Details of these pilots are detailed below along with links to additional information.
Three IOP partner journals are part of the initial phase of the SCOAP3 project (2014 - 2016). Only one IOP partner journal will be included in the second phase (2017 - 2019). Information on how this participation affects authors and librarians is available on our SCOAP3 information page.
Austrian researchers funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) are able to publish on a gold open access basis in IOP Publishing's subscription journals and have their article publication charges paid for them. We have published an online guide to how Austrian researchers can benefit from this initiative.
22 of the top UK Universities are taking part in a three year pilot to offset article publication charges against subscriptions fees with IOP Publishing. Information about IOP Publishing's UK open access pilot for authors and libraries is available on IOPscience.
This service makes research published by us available to nearly all UK public library users.
We publish six fully gold open access journals. The majority of our other titles are hybrid journals meaning that authors can publish under the subscription model or pay an article publication charge and publish their article on a gold open access basis. A full list of the journals offering this option is featured below.
Publishing on a gold open access basis means that authors and their funding agencies can make the Final Published Versions of articles freely available immediately to readers. Authors/funders are charged an article publication charge for gold open access publication. The charge covers online publication costs, from the management of peer review to the online hosting, dissemination and long-term archiving of the published article.
The Final Published Version of the article (also known as the Version of Record) is made freely available immediately on publication under a CC BY licence and can be posted to institutional and subject repositories immediately.
For further information, please see our FAQs page.
The option to make your Accepted Manuscript available on a green open access basis is available to authors publishing on a subcription basis in all IOP Publishing's wholly owned and partner journals after a 12 month embargo period.
Green open access refers to the self archiving of an Accepted Manuscript in a non-commercial institutional or non-commercial subject repository after an embargo period. This applies to articles published on a subscription basis.
Under the terms of IOP Publishing's self-archiving policy, authors can only deposit the Accepted Manuscript of their article 12 months after publication of the Final Published Version (the "embargo period"). The "Accepted Manuscript" is the author's original version of the article including any changes made following the peer review process but excluding any editing, typesetting, or other changes made by IOP Publishing and/or its licensors. The Final Published Version may not be deposited.
The embargo period is in place to enable IOP Publishing to cover publication costs from subscription and licence charges, as under the green open access model there is no other way to meet these costs.
There are no restrictions on the deposit of the original manuscript (preprint/Author's Original) in non-commercial repositories. However, please note if you are depositing your preprint/Author's Original to arXiv, you will need to select the "non-exclusive licence to distibute" offered by arXiv when uploading the article.
See the FAQs page subsection on "Author's Original and the Accepted Manuscript – Subscription Articles" for further information (which can be found in the "Deposit on Repositories – Subscription Articles" section).
Our author rights terms are set out on the Author Rights page.
If you wish to self-archive your paper, you can do so 12 months after publication. IOP deposits papers in PubMed Central automatically for authors funded by the NIH, unless an author requests otherwise, after the 12 month embargo period.
If you wish to publish on a gold open access basis, please tick the open access box in the submission form when you submit your article or add a comment to your submission. You can also let the journal publisher know by e-mailing the journal mailbox with the article reference number, title and author name.
Please note that there is an article publication charge (APC) for publishing on a gold open access basis. This varies by journal, so please check the journal's open access information page for details. Some institutions/funders have special arrangements in place to cover APC's please check with your library/funder if you may be covered under one of these arrangements.
The majority of journals published by IOP Publishing (including many of our partner titles) are hybrid titles meaning that they offer publication under the subscription model, the option to self archive after an embargo (green open access) and a gold open access option. The full list is below.
Gold open access articles are peer-reviewed to the same high standard and are processed in the same way as articles published under the subscription model. The main differences are:
All gold open access articles will be clearly tagged on the article itself to make them easy for readers to find in IOPscience.
All articles published with IOP are preserved for the scientific record through services like CLOCKSS, a trusted community-governed archive.
The article publication charge (APC) for gold open access for hybrid journals (subscription journals which offer a gold open access publishing option) are currently: £1700; $2700; €1950 (excluding VAT where applicable).
The price has been set at the level necessary to cover associated publishing costs and to sustain IOP Publishing's services to the research community. Our prices also reflect the high rejection rates of our journals. Authors publishing on a gold open access basis are only charged for accepted articles (our journals have rejection rates of between 50-75%). Authors also have the option to submit articles to be published under the subscription model, which is generally free. Please refer to the specific journal for information.
Charges on gold open access only titles and some partner titles vary due to historical differences and where there are other sources of funding. Please check the individual journal pages:
In January 2014, we introduced a new referee reward scheme as part of the company's open access policy to help recognise the contribution made by reviewers to the peer-review process. It also benefits researchers who wish to make the Final Published Version of an article available immediately through gold open access.
Referees are offered a 10% credit towards the cost of publishing on a gold open access basis when they review an article.
The majority of IOP Publishing's subscription titles offer a gold open access option, enabling authors to make the Final Published Versions of their research articles free online on payment of an article publication charge. Referee rewards can be used to reduce this publication cost.
We have a similar programme on New Journal of Physics and Environmental Research Letters but the terms are slightly different due to historical reasons.
Information on how to claim your referee reward is available here.
Under the terms of the SCOAP3 agreement, authors of qualifying high-energy physics articles in these journals will be able to publish on a gold open access basis in the following journals until the end of 2016:
The article publication charges (APCs) will be paid by CERN on behalf of the SCOAP3 consortium using funds redirected from library subscription budgets. Find out more.
You will be sent an invoice once your article has been accepted for publication.
IOP Publishing welcomes discussions with institutions and funding bodies about mechanisms to publish all accepted articles by their researchers on a gold open access basis.
Please contact custserv@iop.org, if you are interested in discussing this option.
Article publication charges cover the costs of online publication including production, peer review management, permanent hosting, archiving and dissemination of an article etc. It is a one off fee that enables the article to be freely accessed online in perpetuity.
However, if you are publishing in a journal that has a print edition additional charges may apply if you choose to publish colour images in print. No charges apply for colour in the online version. Please check with the relevant journal.
For the majority of its journals, IOP Publishing requests an 'Assignment of Copyright' for gold open access articles but allows re-use of the original content in the article under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY licence 3.0 (licences on partner titles may vary), which complies with the policies of most funders and governments. The CC BY licence allows anyone to reuse original content from the article for any purpose for free, provided that they cite the original source and provide a link to the CC BY licence. For full terms, please refer to the CC BY licence.
Any exceptions to this are set out where appropriate on journal home pages.
The IOP Publishing team has created a guide to understanding copyright issues in open access publishing available on IOPscience.
When referencing gold open access articles, please include citation information, a CC BY notice with a link to the CC BY licence and a DOI link to the online abstract of the Version of Record. For further information, please refer to the FAQ "How should I cite material which I am re-using under a Creative Commons licence?" on the FAQ's page and refer to the CC BY licence.
Under the CC BY licence, any attribution to metadata may take the following form: "This [title of report or article or dataset or service] contains IOP information ( http://iopscience.iop.org/page/STACKS#metadata) made available under a CC BY 3.0 licence ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Where the full attribution is not technically feasible, we request that a link back to the source of the metadata be used.
IOP Publishing is working with funders and organisations worldwide to help the researchers they represent publish in our journals.
In the UK we are compliant with the RCUK, HEFCE and Wellcome Trust policies on open access.
In the US we are members of CHORUS to help authors comply with the requirements of the major Federal Funders. We are also compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy. Full details of IOP Publishing's policy respecting NIH requirements are available here.
IOP Publishing has agreements for New Journal of Physics (NJP) with the Max Planck Society, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Helmholtz Association. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft (DFG) in Germany have agreed that the NJP publication charge may be applied for in their grants.
Each journal includes information on funder compliance within its open access information.
IOP Publishing's full text and data mining policy is available on IOPscience.
IOP Publishing keeps this policy under review and will respond to any developments or clarifications in the law, as well as to the level of user demand.
Most of IOP Publishing's subscription journals include an option to publish on a gold open access basis.
We take open access article publication charges that have been paid into account, alongside other revenue streams and all costs, when setting subscription prices for our hybrid journals. This ensures that publication costs are not paid for twice, through both subscription and publication charges.
We publish an annual statement on IOPscience (below) that shows how many hybrid open access articles have been published and how this income has been accounted for in setting subscription prices for the coming year.
IOP Publishing offers a gold open access option in more than 40 of our subscription/hybrid titles. We ensure that none of our customers pays twice for access to an article (once through a publication fee and again through a subscription charge) by fully accounting for revenue from article publication charges when setting subscription prices.
Our 2016 prices are now available for customers and subscription prices for hybrid journals have been set using our most recent full year of data on article publication revenue (2014).
In 2014 we saw a significant increase in the number of articles published on an open access basis in our subscription journals. As a result of this we have made adjustments to the pricing of 37 of our journals.
Adjustments ranged from 0.05% to 19.82% and in fact the subscription rates of six of our journals (Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, Journal of Breath Research, Journal of Instrumentation, Journal of Neural Engineering, Journal of Radiological Protection and Physical Biology) will fall in 2016 as a result of the increase in open access articles. The price adjustments are being made for all customers.
For more information about IOP's subscription prices, see the 2016 pricing information.
Please send your questions to openaccess@iop.org or customer.services@iop.org.
Gold open access is the model under which an article publication charge is paid to make the article freely available to read and to re-use by the author, their institution, the funding body or a third party if the gold open access licence allows it. New Journal of Physics and Environmental Research Letters are two examples of gold open access journals. Gold open access articles currently published by IOP Publishing are published under a CC BY licence.
Green open access refers to the self-archiving of an article in a non-commerical subject repository or non-commerical institutional repository (usually after an embargo period). It is the Accepted Manuscript not the Final Published Version (see the description of different versions below) which can be archived. The Accepted Manuscript can be posted after a 12 month embargo for most IOP Publishing journals. However, certain partner titles published by IOP Publishing have different rules – please see the Author Rights page and FAQs page for details. No contribution is made to the costs of publication by the author.
Hybrid open access refers to a publishing model in which subscription-based journals allow authors to make individual articles gold open access on payment of an article publication charge.
There are four main recognised versions of an article in the publishing process.
Pre-print or Author's Original: This is an article before it has been submitted to a publisher; it may have been published online in a pre-print server but has not gone through peer review. It is the authors version of the article before peer review or editing.
Accepted Manuscript: The author's original version of the article including any changes made following the peer review process but excluding any editing, typesetting or other changes made by IOP Publishing and/or its licensors.
Final Published Version: The typeset and copy-edited version of an article published by IOP Publishing in the relevant journal.
Version of Record: The final definitive, authorised version of the article, including editing, typesetting or other changes made by IOP Publishing and/or its licensors, which may include any post-publication corrections or enhancements.
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that has released several copyright licences known as Creative Commons licences free of charge to the public. The licences grant rights to the users of the content but do not replace the copyright, which remains with the copyright owner.