Library Help: Office For Open Research

There are several different ways to publish or share research Open Access (OA): 

• Gold OA KB article 

• Green OA KB article 

• Diamond OA KB article 

When publishing research you may encounter journals with different publishing models. Some journals are fully OA, and some operate a hybrid OA model.  

Fully Open Access journals 

• Publish all content OA immediately on publication 

• You do not need a subscription to the journal to access any of the content within the publication 

• You may need to pay a compulsory Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish in a fully OA journal 

• You can find a comprehensive index of fully OA journals via the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) 

• The Library may be able to support payment of an APC for authors publishing in fully OA journals

Hybrid journals 

• Do not publish all content OA 

• Some articles within the journal may be OA, but many articles within the journal will be published behind a paywall 

• Usually there is no compulsory charge to publish in a hybrid journal, though there are exceptions

Hybrid journals provide authors with two options: 

• To publish articles non-OA (with no fee), or 

• To publish articles OA through payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC) or via an Open Access agreement 

• Non-OA articles will be published behind a paywall, and won’t be accessible to users without institutional or paid access 

• Whilst authors are always able to choose where to publish their research, it may not be possible for Manchester authors to publish papers Gold OA in a hybrid journal. Please see our Hybrid position statement for further information about this.