Article Processing Charge (APC): A fee charged by a journal or publishing platform to cover the costs of producing and publishing an article. Normally, an APC is only charged when the article is published on Gold open access (see below), but occasionally a publisher will levy an APC even if the author is not publishing open access.
Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM): The version of a manuscript as accepted for publication after peer-review but before copyediting or typesetting. Sometimes this is simply called the Accepted Manuscript (AM).
Book Processing Charge (BPC): A fee charged by a publisher to cover the costs of producing and publishing a monograph open access.
Creative Commons licences: Copyright licences developed by Creative Commons, a non-profit organisation, that allow authors and other creators to retain copyright in their work and grant permissions for its re-use and distribution in a standardised way. There are a range of licences, each of which applies different restrictions to the re-use and distribution of the work. The least restrictive is the CC BY Creative Commons Attribution Licence which is usually preferred for open access publications, and required by many funders.
Data Access Statement (DAS): a short statement added to a research publication to inform readers of the existence, location, and availability of underlying datasets. DAS should be included in all research articles, even if there is no data supporting the paper, or if all data is included in the paper. They are required by many research funders and detailed in policies for both research data and open access publications. They are also required by many publishers and their use is recommended in the KCL Research Data Management Policy. Also known as a Data Availability Statement.
Data Management Plan (DMP): a formal document that outlines how researchers’ data will be looked after during the lifetime of the research project and beyond. Most of the major funders require applicants to include a data management plan with their application for funding, and the King's Research Data Management Policy recommends they are written for all research projects.
Data Sharing (or Open Data): There is an expectation and sometimes a requirement, from funders, publishers, and institutions, that research datasets – particularly those that support published research - are made available to the research community as openly as possible. This is also a key element of open research - that the evidence upon which published research is founded is available for scrutiny and re-use. Because some datasets contain information which may be sensitive or hard to anonymise – for example, where data has been gathered from participants – it is recognised that not all data can be shared openly, and therefore may be shared in a controlled, usually on request and using a data access agreement. A key phrase is that data is “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): a unique online reference to an object which contains details of how that object can be accessed. In addition to creating and maintaining DOIs for datasets, Libraries & Collections can also create DOIs for grey literature items (see below). A DOI can be created and added to the document and it will then be published on Pure and made immediately accessible via the King’s Research Portal.
Embargo: In the context of open access, an embargo refers to a time period during which a publisher prohibits a particular version of a publication from being made open access. It most commonly refers to the time that must elapse after publication before an Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) can be made freely available (Green open access – see below).
Fully open access journal/publishing platform: A journal or publishing platform that publishes articles exclusively open access, usually under a Creative Commons licence (see above). There are no subscription fees or other charges for readers.
Gold open access: This is where the final published version of an article or other publication (the Version of Record) is made immediately and freely available on the publisher’s website, usually in return for an open access fee.
Green open access: Also known as Self-Archiving, this is where the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of a publication is made freely available in an open access repository (see Institutional Repository and Subject Repository for example). This route to open access does not require payment of an article processing charge by the author or their institution.
Grey literature: might include outputs such as working papers, protocols, reports and other items which do not have a traditional publication route (e.g., journal or book format), but where the research findings might benefit from being made more widely accessible and/or in a format possibly more suited to non-academic audiences, such as a pamphlet.