This journal is a fully open access journal, which means all articles are published as Gold Open Access under a Creative Commons licence. This enables anyone to access and redistribute the content and, depending upon the licence, re-use the content in new or derivative works with attribution. The terms of re-use for Gold Open Access content are stated in the copyright line of the article.

The Creative Commons licences offered by this journal for Gold Open Access articles are CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA and CC BY-NC-ND.

Open Access Funding

Multiple funding routes for Gold Open Access publication are available to authors publishing in this journal:

• If the corresponding author of a research article is affiliated with an institution with which Cambridge University Press has an open access publishing agreement, in the majority of cases this will cover the full costs of publication (specific terms and conditions vary) and Cambridge will liaise directly with the institution to determine eligibility and secure this funding. Authors can use our eligibility checker to see if their institution has an active agreement.
• The Cambridge Open Equity Initiative (COEI) funds Gold Open Access publishing for authors from over 100 low- and middle-income countries, covering over 5,000 institutions. Eligibility is automatically established during the publication process and no Gold Open Access fees will be charged if the corresponding author of a research article is based in one of these countries. 
• If the research behind the article was funded by a grant or arrangement with a funding body that supports the payment of article processing charges (APCs), authors are asked to pay an APC out of those funds. Please check the fees and pricing page for details of this journal’s charges, and our central APC page for further information such as APC refund policies.
• Authors from low- and middle-income countries who are not covered by an institutional open access agreement or the Cambridge Open Equity Initiative may be eligible for support under the Research4Life scheme. Corresponding authors of research articles based in 'Group A’ countries will automatically have APC costs waived entirely, and authors based in ‘Group B’ countries will automatically receive a 50% discount on an article’s APC.
• This journal also grants waivers on a discretionary basis, for authors who do not have funds available to pay an APC and are not covered by the options above. Authors must request a waiver at or before submission, before an article enters editorial consideration, by filling out a waiver request form.

Please note that the decision whether to accept a paper for publication will rest solely with the Editor, and without reference to the funding situation of the authors. The Editor, editorial board members, and reviewers will have no involvement with the billing of APCs and cannot grant discretionary waivers.

Other routes to open access

Under this journal’s Green Open Access policy, authors can make pre-published versions of their articles available in institutional or other repositories, or on their personal or departmental websites, under certain conditions. This allows authors to comply with the open access mandates of many funders and institutions before the final article is published as Gold Open Access. For more information, please see Cambridge University Press’s Green Open Access policy page, where you can download a spreadsheet with full details about which versions of articles authors can post online, and where and when authors can post them.

If you have open access questions which are not answered by our policy pages and resources, please contact [email protected].

Preprint policy

A preprint is an early version of an article prior to the version accepted for publication in a journal. This journal allows preprints to be posted anywhere at any time, including before submission to the journal. For more information, see the Cambridge University Press preprint policy.