There is a lot of jargon that appears when we start talking about open access. Sometimes it seems like you’re learning another language! We’ve collected the abbreviations and terminology and put them on this page. Now you can easily check the jargon buster when you come acrosss something you haven’t seen before or simply need a reminder.
APC – Article Processing Charge. Some publishers charge authors an APC before they will publish their article.
Closed deposit – publishers and/or funders state a complete work deposited in an institutional repository must not accessible throughout a specified period of time. After the time period has expired, the work can become open access.
Date of publication – earliest date that the final version of record is made available on the publisher’s website
Embargo – a period of time during which access to a published work is restricted to people either paying a fee or using an authorised login to access a publisher’s website where they can access the full published text of the work.
Green and Gold – these terms represent the different methods of open access publishing
HEI – Higher Education Institution
Hybrid journal – a subscription journal that also contains individual open access articles published after payment of an APC
ISSN – International Standard Serial Number
ORCID – Open Researcher and Contributor ID. Register with ORCID and get a unique identifying number that distinguishes you (and your work) from other researchers with a similar or identical name
Post-print – author’s manuscript, after amendment from peer review. Also known as ‘accepted author manuscript/final author version/author’s final peer-reviewed manuscript’
Pre-print – the author’s manuscript before amendments from peer review
Predatory journal – a journal or publisher that aggressively targets academics and researchers. Also known as ‘deceptive’ publishing, as these journals do not actually undertake peer review.
Publisher’s PDF – version that appears on publisher’s website after publication, including publisher copy-editing, proof corrections, layout and typesetting. Also known as ‘version of record’.
REF – Research Excellence Framework
Target journal – the journal you’d like or choose to have your research to be published in