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FAQs

Our Membership Application Process

Yes, if you don’t actually publish anything but actively support Open Access with your organisation, then you are welcome to apply for an ‘Infrastructure’ membership (Commercial or Non-Commercial). We have a number of libraries as non-commercial infrastructure members, for example. Some platform providers fall into the Commercial or Non-Commercial Infrastructure membership category.

Infrastructure members have to demonstrate that they actively support OA, on their website. If and when you do so, we’ll probably be able to process your application fairly quickly.

Our membership application form is designed so that we can get full information from academic publishers, so many of the questions meant for publishers are non-applicable for applicants to Infrastructure membership and you can either click ‘non-applicable’ or just say so. Please, however, answer our question: “Please indicate any other OA initiatives in your organisation” on the application form especially thoroughly.

Some organisations are eligible to join us as an OASPA Supporter rather than as an actual member. Further information about this category is also available.

If you actively provide specific services for Open Access and say so clearly on your website (and are not a publisher or a self-published journal), you can apply for ‘Infrastructure & Services’ membership of OASPA. If this is not the case and you don’t have immediate plans to introduce specific activities, you may still be able to join under our Supporter category. Further information about this category is also available.

  1. Check that you are eligible for membership. If you are an Open Access publisher or infrastructure provider and wish to apply for OASPA membership, please check our membership criteria and only formally apply for membership of OASPA if you meet all those that are relevant for your category. Check your membership type. The different types of membership and associated fees are also found on our website, at
    https://www.oaspa.org/membership/    . If you are not sure, please ask us.
  2. Apply online. Once you are confident that you have met all of our membership criteria relevant for your category, we’ll be delighted to receive your online application at https://www.oaspa.org/apply/.
  3. Assessment of your application. Your application will be evaluated against our membership criteria in detail.
  4. First feedback. Once your application has been evaluated, we will work with you towards meeting all of our membership criteria if you wish.
  5. Proposing your application to the Membership Committee of our Board of Directors, once your adherence to our membership criteria has been assessed and updated as needed. They may have further questions before hopefully approving you as a new member of OASPA.
  6. Approval of your membership and issuing of the invoice for your annual membership fees in advance (reduced annual fee will be charged for applications accepted after August in each year).

Please be assured that our application process for all applicants, regardless of size or type of membership, is the same. Although we take membership of our organisation very seriously (and our membership application process is therefore detailed and thorough for all applications), our aim is to aid the use of Best Practice throughout OA Publishing, and our Membership Manager will help and encourage you through this process. This is one of the services we provide free of charge to the OA community.

Our application process for all applicants, regardless of size or type of membership, can take several weeks, sometimes months, depending on how compliant you are with our membership criteria in the first place, and how quickly we can resolve remaining problems. Our recommendation is therefore to ensure full compliance before you apply. We are here to answer questions before and during your application.

Please be assured that although we take membership of our organisation very seriously (and our membership application process is therefore detailed and thorough for all applications), our aim is to aid the use of Best Practice throughout OA Publishing, and our Membership Manager will help and encourage you through this process. This is one of the services we provide free of charge to the OA community, and it is also why some applications take longer than others to process and be successful.

To qualify for OASPA membership, we recommend that [Publishers of] new journals wait for at least one year before they apply, to be able to demonstrate a regular publication schedule, which is needed for OASPA membership. Your journal must furthermore be indexed in DOAJ. Once you meet all of our other membership criteria, you are welcome to apply for membership via our online application form.

Single-journal applicants are usually ‘Scholar Publishers’. Please note that we have membership fees. The different types of membership and associated fees can be found on our website.

We recommend and hope that you will keep our membership criteria in mind while you build your journal, and that in due course, your journal will apply and become a member of OASPA! Our freely available OA Journals Toolkit may be useful – please do check it out, we made this for you!

Are you a Scholar Publisher member of OASPA and would like to join Crossref via our sponsored agreement? You must be an approved single-journal Scholar Publisher member of OASPA to benefit from this arrangement. If you are a single-journal publisher and wish to become a member of OASPA, please check our membership criteria and formally apply for membership of OASPA once you meet all of the points relevant for Scholar Publishers.

Once you are fully signed up as an OASPA member in the Scholar Publisher category you are eligible to join Crossref via a special Sponsored Agreement we have in place. OASPA will cover the cost of 50 DOIs per year for single-journal members under this agreement. We receive reports from Crossref on a quarterly basis detailing member activity. We will bill members for any DOIs they register per year beyond the allowance of 50. Please email us at [email protected] for guidance on the registration process, and for CrossRef to create your DOI prefix or to let us know your existing DOI prefix.

Our Membership Criteria

OASPA’s membership criteria closely adhere to our Principles of Transparency and Best Practice for Scholarly Publications.

Content

Your journal’s name should be unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal, and the name should not mislead potential authors and readers about the journal’s origin, scope, or association with other journals and organisations. Please ensure that this is the case before applying for OASPA membership as a journal publisher or for your journal(s). Journal names can be checked at portal.issn.org.

Your journal’s website, including the text that it contains, should demonstrate that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards. This is a requirement not just for journal publishers but for all our members. Those responsible for the website should apply web accessibility standards to the website’s content, presentation, and application. (See also our FAQ on publication ethics.)

The website should not copy another journal/publisher’s site, design, or logo. If any text is copied from another website, an acknowledgement to the source website should be declared.

The following journal information should be clearly displayed for journal websites:

  • Aims and scope.
  • The target readership of the journal.
    The types of manuscripts the journal will consider for publication (for example, that multiple or redundant publication is not allowed).
  • Authorship criteria.
  • ISSNs (separate for print and electronic versions).

Your journal’s publishing frequency should be clearly described, and the journal must keep to its publishing schedule unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Do you publish monthly, quarterly, annually, or continuously? Please say so on your website.

Ensuring that full-text Open-Access (OA) content is preserved in a repository accessible to all is one of OA’s recognised items of Best Practice (see our Principles of transparency and best practice for scholarly publications). This is to cover the event that a journal might cease publication or in case the publisher or owner stops operating. It also ensures equity by making OA content available to all, independently.

In order to meet this requirement, at least one of the repositories that you selected needs to be

  • Digital
  • Full-text
  • Permanent
  • Independent
  • Internationally accessible

Our first port of call is the list of recognised repositories on the ISSN ‘s Keepers Registry. If your archive is listed by Keepers, we accept this as meeting our membership criterion. Most national archives not currently listed on Keepers are also recognised by OASPA, but if unsure please check with us during or before the application process. Digital archives of journal publishers should be listed in their record on Keepers.

Members need to state their archiving policy clearly on their website, and your archive(s) should be listed on your record in the Keeper’s Directory.

If you are a single-journal Publisher and listed by the DOAJ (which is also required for OASPA Membership if you are a publisher of more than one journal), we recommend that you obtain this via the DOAJ. The DOAJ has a program for no-fee “diamond” journals that are already indexed in DOAJ who can apply for permanent international digital archive free of charge.

Please check your Keepers record by typing in your ISSN here and follow the advice on the Keepers’ website to update your record on the Keepers Directory.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

The copyright terms for your published content should be clearly stated on the website and in the content.

(The copyright terms for the published content should be separate and distinct from the copyright of the website.)

The copyright holder should be named on the full text of all published articles (HTML and PDF). Please ensure that this is part of your publication template.

If the copyright terms are described in a separate form, this should be easy to find on the website and available to all.

Licensing

Licensing information should be clearly described on the website.

Licensing terms should be indicated on the full text of all published articles (HTML and PDF). Please ensure that this is part of your publication template.

Any content designated as Open Access must use an open license. OASPA supports Creative Commons licenses, and journals must use CC BY or CC BY-NC, regardless of who owns the copyright. If Creative Commons licenses are used, then the terms of that license should also link to the correct license on the Creative Commons website.

Open access journals are ideally placed to raise awareness of licensing options and to encourage authors and publishers to apply permissive licensing terms so that the work can be used as openly as possible (see Copyright and licensing – OA Journals Toolkit).

Copyright is the legal term used to declare and prove who owns the intellectual property of an article. When an article is created, copyright often sits with the author(s) or the author’s institution.

Licensing is used to describe the terms under which people are allowed to use the copyrighted material.

Copyright, intellectual property and licensing are three different concepts within publishing. Copyright and intellectual property are types of intellectual ownership, aiming to protect creative works, and academic articles are protected by copyright.

Whoever ‘owns’ a work (= copyright) can license it out (i.e. define the way the work is distributed).

The copyright holder can decide how the work may be used, published or shared by readers and other researchers. When publishing via open access, authors either

  • retain copyright in their work and license it to the journal or publisher where their paper was accepted, (and potentially also to others), or they
  • are requested to transfer copyright to the journal or publisher where they are publishing their work.

Licenses can only be issued by the copyright holder. If the copyright has been transferred to the publisher, the journal or publisher licenses out the work for specific use.

OASPA supports Creative Commons licenses, and journals must use CC BY or CC BY-NC, regardless of who owns the copyright. This is a condition of membership.

Intellectual property remains with the author at all times, regardless of who owns the copyright. (The holder of intellectual property must be acknowledged, e.g. “used” articles must be cited.)

Please have a look at what we say about this on Think. Check. Submit.

For members who publish books, OASPA requires that the books are covered by any of the six Creative Commons licenses. The license should be easily accessible on all versions of the OA book, for example in the front matter at the start of the book’ where authors, publisher details and publication year are typically listed.

Please also read the licensing information on our OA Books toolkit website.

At OASPA, one of the criteria for membership is that a publisher must use a liberal license that encourages the reuse and distribution of content. We strongly encourage publishers to choose a Creative Commons license and recommend (but currently do not require) the use of the CC-BY license wherever possible. As emphasised by the early declarations on open access in Budapest, Bethesda and Berlin, open access is about more than access – open access removes access and reuse barriers, and thus has the potential to transform the literature into a much more powerful resource for research, education and innovation.

To fully realise the potential of open access to research literature, barriers to reuse need to be removed. The Creative Commons (CC) licenses have emerged as an effective legal instrument to achieve this. Instead of transferring rights exclusively to publishers (the approach usually followed in subscription publishing), authors grant a non-exclusive license to the publisher to distribute the work, and all users and readers are granted rights to reuse the work.

We encourage the use of CC licenses, not only because they are very well established legal tools, but because they have the benefits of simplicity, machine-readability and interoperability. Importantly, many elements of internet infrastructure ‘understand’ CC licensing, and can display and filter content appropriately, based on this machine-readable license information (e.g. Flickr), in a way that is unlikely to be practical for ad hoc, publisher-specific licenses.

Given the ways in which additional restrictions can limit the reach and impact of research outputs, OASPA therefore strongly encourages the use of the CC-BY license, rather than one of the more restrictive licenses or indeed a license that is ‘functionally equivalent’ to CC-BY.CC-BY allows for unrestricted reuse of content, subject only to the requirement that the source work is appropriately attributed. The CC-BY license thereby requires that authors are given appropriate credit for their work, as explained in a recent post from Creative Commons.
OASPA will currently also admit members who have a CC-BY-NC policy, whereby they permit re-use for non-commercial (hence ‘NC’) purposes. OASPA recognises and accepts that some members may impose restrictions on reuse, such as commercial reuse, but require that any restrictions must be clearly indicated.

There are two key problems with a no commercial use restriction. The first is that the definition of what constitutes commercial use is necessarily fuzzy, and so any license which restricts commercial use creates a haze of doubt around various uses that may or may not be at risk of being considered commercial, and in doing so acts as a general discouragement to reuse.

In the case of scientific research, work is not funded by taxpayers and companies purely to serve as a resource to further academic discussion and debate. A major justification for the large-scale research investment is that it will produce new knowledge, the application of which will help to develop and enrich our society. Enabling the commercial sector to have access to and freedom to reuse research literature for knowledge discovery and the development of tools and services (as exemplified by the human genome project) is a natural way to seek to achieve these ends. See also: Why Full Open Access Matters.

Each type of restriction has its uses, for certain types of content and certain types of sharing. But the emerging consensus on the adoption of CC-BY reflects the fact that any of these restrictions needlessly limits the possible reuse of published research.

CC-BY-SA: Share-Alike. Material distributed under a share-alike license can be used to create and distribute derivative works, but only if those works are shared under the same Share-Alike license. Such licenses are sometimes referred to as Viral licenses, as “the licenses spread a continuing use of the licenses in its derivatives”. However, while such licenses can be extremely helpful in building up a collection of content, they also have downsides in terms of the limitations they place on reuse. For example, material distributed within a Share-Alike article could only be combined and redistributed with other share-alike content. In contrast, CC-BY content can be combined with any content, and redistributed according to the terms of that other content, as long as CC-BY’s own attribution requirement is respected. This makes CC-BY something like a universal donor blood-type in that it has maximal compatibility.

CC-BY-NC-ND: No Derivatives. Derived use is fundamental to the way in which scholarly research builds on what has gone before. One of the many benefits of open access publishing is that elements such as figures from a published research article can be reused, with attribution, as part of teaching material, or in other published works, without needing to request permission of the publisher. Similarly, article translations, image libraries, case report databases, text-mining enhancements and data visualisations are all examples of how additional value can be created by allowing derivative use.

Creative Commons explain the difference between the licenses here and have their own very helpful FAQ for anyone who needs further information on how the licenses work, which to choose and how to display the license.
For further details see here.

Possibly. OASPA continuously reviews all policies.

Publishing Practices

Your journal or organisation must have policies on publishing ethics, and procedures in place on how you implement these policies (a key resource for this is the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE’s Core Practice guidance). These policies should be visible on the website of all publishers and publications, and, should refer to the following areas as relevant:

  • authorship and contributorship.
  • handling of complaints and appeals.
  • handling allegations of research misconduct.
  • conflicts of interest.
  • data sharing and reproducibility.
  • ethical oversight.
  • intellectual property.
  • post-publication discussions.
  • corrections and retractions.

Editors and publishers are responsible for ensuring the integrity of the scholarly literature in their journals and books and should ensure they outline their policies and procedures for handling such issues when they arise. These issues include plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. Neither the journal’s policies nor the statements of its editors should encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. In the event that a journal’s editors or publisher are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a submitted or published article in their journal, the editor or publisher should follow COPE’s guidance (or equivalent) in dealing with allegations.

Our OA Journals Toolkit has a comprehensive section on this topic.

Our ‘Principles of Transparency and Best Practice for Scholarly Publications’ define ‘Peer Review’ as obtaining advice on manuscripts from reviewers/ experts in the manuscript’s subject area. Those individuals should not be part of the journal’s editorial team. However, the specific elements of peer review may differ by journal/ book and discipline, so the following should be clearly stated on the website:

  • Whether or not the content is peer reviewed.
  • Who conducts the peer review, for example, external experts or editorial board members.
  • The type of peer review process(es) used
  • Any policies related to the peer review procedures, for example:
    • Use of author recommended reviewers.
    • Any masking of identities, also referred to historically as “blind peer-review”, and if so who is masked and to whom.
    • Whether or not supplementary material is subjected to peer review.
    • Whether or not reviews are posted with articles.
    • Whether or not reviews are signed or anonymous.
  • How a decision about a manuscript is ultimately made and who is involved.
  • Any exceptions to the peer review process, such as specific article types that do not undergo peer review.

If an article’s peer review is an exception to the usual policy, the article should state what review it received.

Journals or books should not guarantee acceptance of initial manuscript submissions. Statements of peer review times should be supported by published timeframes on accepted papers. In the event of delays, authors should be informed of the reason for the delay and given the opportunity to withdraw their manuscript if they wish.

The date of submission, acceptance, and publication should be published with all published research.

Our Journal Toolkit also provides useful detail on peer review and transparency around peer-review policy.

As OASPA is an organisation entirely focussed on open access publishing, we expect online content to be open access. If any of the online content is not freely accessible to everyone for some reason, the method of gaining access (for example, registration, subscription, or pay-per-view fees) should be clearly described. If offline versions (for example, print) are available, this should be clearly described along with any associated charges, and required method of payment.

Reducing barriers to access and OA publishing in general is one of OASPA’s key recommendations (see also our Examples of inclusive practices in OA publishing).

Access to your OA content should be direct and without requiring registration of any kind (although it is permissible to give users the [non-compulsory] option to register if they want to be included in regular updates, for example).

Our ‘Principles of Transparency and Best Practice for Scholarly Publications’ state that information about the ownership and/or management of a journal shall be clearly indicated on the journal’s website.

Organisational names should not be used in a way that could mislead potential authors and editors about the nature of the journal’s owner. If a journal is affiliated with a society, institution, or sponsor, links to their website(s) should be provided where available.

Ownership shall be separate from the editorial process.

Our ‘Principles of Transparency and Best Practice for Scholarly Publications’ state that journals should have editorial boards or other advisory bodies whose members are recognised experts in the subject areas stated in the journal’s aims and scope.

The full names and primary institutional affiliations of the members need to be provided on the journal’s website, including departments of institutes, and the list should be up to date and reviewed regularly.

The journal’s policy and procedures regarding terms of service and voting in of additional or replacement Editorial or Advisory Board members should also ideally be included in the Member application in order for the journal’s long-term functioning to be sustained and reliable.

Our ‘Principles of Transparency and Best Practice for Scholarly Publications’ state that journals shall provide the full names and primary institutional affiliations of the journal’s editors on the journal website, as well as contact information for the editorial offic,e including named individuals, their role, and including a full office address.

Business Practices

If author fees or per-publication fees are charged (such as article processing charges [APCs], page charges, editorial processing charges, language editing fees, colour charges, submission fees, membership fees, or other supplementary charges), then the fees should be clearly stated on the website, together with the required method of payment.
Information about applicable fees (or the potential for such fees) should be easy to find, with up-to-date pricing.

If there are no such fees, this should be clearly stated. If the journal is likely to implement author charges in the future, this should be stated.

A waiver policy for author fees should exist, with clear information on waivers, including:

  • Who is eligible for a waiver.
  • Which author(s) of the group must be eligible for the waiver to apply.
  • When and how to apply for a waiver.
  • Any title-level exclusions or end-dates for existing waiver policy.

Author fees or waiver status should not influence editorial decision making, and this should be clearly stated.

Further reading:
As waivers uphold a power dynamic and intensify cumulative advantage, waiver policy and workflows should be constructed with sensitivity. More detail on per-publication fees and waivers is found under part (4) of OASPA’s recommended practices on workflows. A few examples for transparent reporting of fees can be found in our Examples of inclusive practices in open access publishing.

See also this guidance from COPE for editorial independence in cases of author fees and waivers.

Business models or revenue sources should be clearly stated on your website.

Examples include author fees, subscriptions, sponsorships and subsidies, advertising, reprints, supplements, or special issues.
Business models or revenue sources (for example, reprint income, supplements, special issues, sponsorships) should not influence editorial decision-making.

A few examples for transparent disclosure of finances can be found in our Examples of inclusive practices in open access publishing.

Journals should state whether they accept advertising. If they do, they should state their advertising policy, including:

  • Which types of advertisements will be considered.
  • Who makes decisions regarding accepting advertisements.
  • Whether they are linked to content or reader behaviour or are displayed at random.

Advertisements should not be related in any way to editorial decision-making and should be kept separate from the published content.

Any direct marketing activities, including solicitation of manuscripts, that are conducted on behalf of the journal should be appropriate, well-targeted, and unobtrusive. Information provided about the publisher or journal should be truthful and not misleading for readers or authors.

Your journal article or book/ book chapter html and PDF files must display:

  • Submission, acceptance and publication dates.
  • Author contact information.
  • The licence: CC BY or CC BY-NC
  • A copyright statement, for example “Copyright: © The Author(s), [Year]”.

This is for transparency reasons: since each article or book/ book chapter may be downloaded on its own it therefore must contain information on authorship, ownership, publishing milestone dates and conditions of re-use.

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