Accepted author manuscript (AAM) - also known as a post-print. The peer-reviewed, final version of an article prior to publication. This is not the same as the publisher’s PDF.
Article processing charge (APC) - a publisher’s fee for covering publishing costs such as those associated with editorial and peer-review processes. A consequence of payment of an APC is gold (immediate) open access to the research paper.
CC BY - Creative Commons Attribution licence. One of the six Creative Commons licences and the licence UK funders prefer. It allows reuse of your publication but requires that you are credited as the author.
Data repository - a digital storage location that can house, preserve, manage, and provide access to many types of research data and supporting documentation in a variety of formats. Materials in online data repositories are curated to enable search, discovery, and reuse. Imperial's institutional repository is Helix.
Date of acceptance - the date an article is accepted, after peer review, for publication by a journal.
Deposit - adding a research output, such as an article, to a repository.
Diamond open access - journals and platforms that make research freely available to read without charging authors to publish. Publishing is supported through institutional, society, library, or grant funding.
Directory of Access Journals (DOAJ) - a directory of open access journals that meet recognised standards for quality and transparency.
Discoverable - the article can be found by readers and search engines, usually facilitated through a bibliographic or metadata record associated with the full text.
Embargo - a period during which access to scholarly work is restricted to those who have paid for access. Once the embargo period ends, an article can be deposited in a repository (if permitted by the publisher).
Gold open access - publishers make research articles immediately and freely available from the point of publication, and usually apply an article processing charge.
Green open access - the author makes a version of a research output freely available via an institutional or subject repository. Publishers stipulate the version of manuscript that can be self-archived and the length of embargo period following publication before the paper is made open access.
Helix - Imperial's institutional research data repository, designed to preserve, showcase, and provide access to research data produced by Imperial researchers, with datasets assigned DOIs to support discovery, citation, and reuse.
Hybrid journal - A hybrid journal is a subscription journal that provides an author with the option to publish their article immediately open access (OA) via payment of an article processing charge (APC), which ensures the Version of Record (VOR) is published as OA on the journal website.
Institutional repository - an online archive of an institution’s scholarly outputs. The collection can include publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and book-sections, technical reports, working papers, monographs, conference presentations, audio and visual materials or any other research content that has some scholarly value. Imperial's institutional repository is Spiral.
Metadata - data that describes other data. For items in open access repositories, this usually consists of a full bibliographic reference, abstract, keywords and similar information.
Mirror journals - open access versions of subscription journals with similar aims, scope, peer review processes, and policies. They may be listed in DOAJ and have their own ISSN. They are considered 'hybrid' for open access funding purposes.
Open access - the online availability of scholarly work via the internet, free of charge to individuals who wish to access and read it.
Open access journal or fully open access journal - a journal whose content is freely available online and where user rights and the terms of copyright are defined. True open-access journals can be split into two categories: diamond open access journals, and gold open-access journals.
Open licence - the licence outlines what a person may do with a third-party copyright work. An example of an open licence is a Creative Commons (CC) licence, which combines four basic elements: the attribution, the derivatives, the commercial use, and the ‘share-alike’ principle.
Output - a piece of research content, including articles, books, chapters, technical reports, working papers, monographs, conference presentations, or audio and visual materials. It can also include research datasets.
Plan S - a research funder led initiative to make research outputs from funded research immediately and freely available to everyone, accelerating the transition to full open access.
Pre-print and pre-print server - a preprint is a draft research article shared before peer review. A preprint server is an online platform that makes these manuscripts publicly available, enabling rapid dissemination of research. Examples include arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv.
Publisher’s PDF - otherwise known as Version of Record the final published version of an article, including the publisher’s copy-editing, proof corrections, layout, and typesetting.
Read and Publish agreements - agreements between institutions and publishers that combine access to subscription content with open access publishing for affiliated authors under a single fee, removing the need for individual article processing charge (APC) payments.
REF 2029 - Research Excellence Framework 2029 is the UK-wide assessment of research quality, impact, and culture in higher education. Depositing eligible research outputs in Spiral, Imperial’s institutional repository, helps researchers meet REF open access requirements and ensures their work can be considered for REF 2029.
Self-archiving - the process of depositing your research output to a repository along with bibliographic metadata. At Imperial you can do this via Symplectic. This process involves granting an open licence regarding access and reuse of your work.
Spiral - Imperial's institutional repository for research outputs, providing long-term open access to journal articles, conference papers, theses, reports, and other scholarly works while supporting compliance with funder and publisher requirements.
Subject repository - an online repository that collects and provides open access research outputs within a specific discipline or subject area
Subscribe to Open (S2O) - an open access publishing model that makes journal content freely available when enough institutions continue to subscribe. Rather than charging authors article processing charges (APCs), publication costs are supported collectively through institutional subscriptions.
Symplectic - Imperial's Current Research Information System (CRIS), used to manage research outputs and scholarly activities, support reporting, and enable deposit of eligible publications in Spiral to meet open access requirements.
Transformative agreement - see entry for Read and Publish agreements
Version of Record - sometimes known as Publisher’s PDF the final published version of an article, including the publisher’s copy-editing, proof corrections, layout, and typesetting.