Publishing open access
Publishing your research Gold Open Access (Gold OA) helps to advance discovery by allowing anyone, anywhere to find, read, and benefit from your research.
Across our journals and books, we offer the option to publish your research Gold OA, working with publishing partners to develop open access for different communities. Our Green Open Access policies also allow you to archive some versions of your publications in repositories, or to share them socially.
The majority of Cambridge journals support Gold Open Access:
- Fully Gold Open Access journals (in which all research content is published Gold OA)
- Hybrid journals (in which authors have the option to publish Gold OA if they choose)
Detailed information about your about open access options when publishing with a specific journal can be found on the journal’s homepage. Please navigate to the ‘Information’ area, and look under ‘Journal policies’ for ‘Open access options’.
Find out more about our open access policies
"Our vision is to unlock the potential of high quality research and build an open future"
Benefits of publishing open access
Did you know that 75% of open access articles get more citations than their non-OA equivalents, receiving on average 30-50% more citations?
Open access makes scholarly research permanently available online without restriction, which can provide benefits to all those in the scholarly publishing process – researchers, funders, students, librarians, scholarly societies, publishers and the general public.
The benefits of OA include:
Discoverability and dissemination:
Open access works are freely available online for anyone in the world to access and share. Researchers can access OA literature, even outside a university campus, without encountering paywalls. Authors can benefit from the open availability of their research to others, potentially leading to an increase in the visibility and usage of their work. Many funding agencies have encouraged or mandated OA because the potential for enhanced visibility and discoverability promises a greater return on their investment.
Educational and other re-use:
Gold OA works can often be re-used without needing to request additional permission from publishers. For example, an OA article could be re-published in a university course package, or translated by someone into a different language, or figures or text from an article could be re-used in a presentation. Through Gold OA it is possible to enable anyone to make derivative versions of your work, depending upon the particular Creative Commons licence you apply.
Public access and engagement:
Open access means greater access for society at large and potentially greater public engagement with research. It can help professionals outside academia who rely on research – including health workers, teachers and lawyers – to benefit from access to the latest findings.
Funding Gold Open Access publication
In some cases, Gold Open Access is supported by APCs, which are typically paid by an author’s funding body or institution. Cambridge also offers other funding options to support Gold OA, particularly for authors with limited access to funding.
For full details, please check our funding options for Cambridge authors.