Open access (OA) works are available to readers without cost or legal barriers – they can be freely read and freely shared. OA publications may be accessed through a journal or publisher, through an author's personal website, or through other openly accessible platforms.
While open access means free to read, OA models are not necessarily free to publish. Penn Libraries maintains OA agreements with several publishers and individual journals to pay OA fees on behalf of authors. To see if your work is eligible, consult our Open Access Agreements guide.
While OA works are free to read, they may not be free to publish for authors. Below are four common OA publishing models. Each describes a way to make your scholarship openly accessible. Jisc's Open Policy Finder and the Directory of Open Access Journals platform provide information about the type of open access provided by individual journals.
In green OA models, there is no fee for authors to publish and no fees for readers. This can take a number of forms, including:
Publishers will vary on where, what and whether they allow authors to post (preprints or version of record; immediately or after an embargo). This is something to keep in mind when you are signing contracts or reviewing your existing contracts.
Since Green OA can be so varied, this guide has a whole page dedicated to Green OA models to go into more detail.
In Gold OA models, there is a fee for authors to publish, while the readers do not have a fee to read. This fee is often referred to as an APC or "article processing charge." Gold OA journals publish all of their articles open access, which means authors (or their institutions) must pay a fee to be published in that journal.
In hybrid models, authors have a choice: they can pay to make their work open access, which allows readers to read for free, or they can decline to pay, and their work will remain behind a paywall. Only readers who pay (or who have access through subscribing institutions, like libraries) can access the work. Hybrid journals will display a mix of open access articles and paywalled articles.
Diamond OA journals are free for authors to publish and free for readers as well. These newer OA models receive funding from grants, institutions, professional societies, or foundations. Many libraries work with scholarly societies and not-for-profit publishers to help support Diamond open access
Initiatives
As with any publisher, check open access publishers for their editorial process, which should be outlined on their website. For journals, check to see if the work will be peer reviewed. Ask your mentors and colleagues about a journal if you are unfamiliar with it. To learn more about determining journal quality, take a look at our tab for evaluating journal platforms.
Every piece of original, fixed expression is subject to copyright unless the author intentionally dedicates it to the Public Domain. When making a work open access, authors or publishers will typically select a license to specify how that work can be used -- even potentially remixed and reused. See our copyright guide and our tab on Creative Commons licensing for more information on copyright and sharing your work.
Check out our Quick Guide to Publishing Open Access at Penn zine, published spring 2025 by Penn Libraries:
Links within the zine:
