Biophysical Society Bulletin | June 2020

Publications

Open Access FAQs This is the third and final article in the series on open access. Please see the April and May issues of the BPS Bulletin for previous articles. In this installment answers are offered to some of the frequently asked questions about open access. I know there are different types of open access. What are they? Green and gold open access are the most common and are most commonly applied to access at the article level. In green open access, the version of record is behind a paywall on the publisher’s platform but is “open” in that a version, such as the author’s accepted manuscript, may be post- ed elsewhere — say on a personal website or institutional repository. Or, maybe the final published version is allowed to be shared openly, but is not made open on the publisher’s platform. Policies about posting articles other than on the publishers site differ among publishers. A gold open access article is the version of record that is openly available immediately upon publication on the publish- er’s platform. For an author to publish their article gold open access, an article processing charge (APC) is typically paid by or on behalf of the author. Biophysical Journal offers this option. A bronze open access article is made freely available for reading by publisher policy or practice. This is usually done for purposes of marketing or promotion. An example from Biophysical Journal would be when a special article collection is published, the articles are opened to the world for a period of 30 days. Bronze open access is usually temporary and is not related to author payment. Other examples include “opening up” articles by Nobel Prize winners or historically significant articles. What is Journal-level open access? A hybrid journal offers the option for authors to pay an APC and publish their article gold open access. Other articles in the journal are behind a subscription wall. A gold open access journal means that all the articles in the journal are open access and authors are responsible for pay- ing article processing charges (APCs). A diamond open access journal means that all of the articles within the journal are open access, but the journal is generally funded with fees other than APCs.

Is open access the same as open science? No. Open access refers only to the ability to discover or read an article without paying a subscription fee. Open science generally refers to making available not just the final results, but also raw data, software used to analyze it, lab notebooks, etc. If I publish open access, how do I know which license to sign? For gold open access articles authors retain the copyright. The license determines how readers can share and use your article without the need to request permission. Biophysical Journal offers two types of licenses for open access articles. The first option is referred to as a CC-BY license, which allows users to alter and build upon the article and then distribute the resulting work, even commercially. The work must be attributed to the original author and publisher. This license encourages maximum use and distribution. The second option is the CC-BY-NC-ND license, which allows users to copy and distribute the article, provided the work is attributed back to the original author and publisher. The arti- cle cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.

June 2020

10

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y