Green Open Access policy for journals
Funders, public research agencies, and other organisations often require the research they support to be made freely available online, or published open access.
The best way to ensure maximum openness and re-usability of an article’s content is to publish it as Gold Open Access, which means the final ‘Version of Record’ of an article is immediately made freely available, under a permissive licence that often includes additional re-use rights.
Our Green Open Access (Green OA) policy for journals provides another way for authors to comply with funders’ requirements to make research freely available to read, by allowing authors to make pre-final versions of their journal articles publicly accessible, regardless of the licensing terms of their final Version of Record.
This page explains what is permitted by our standard Green OA policy, which applies to most journals published by Cambridge.
Please note:
- Our standard Green OA policy, with its permissive Creative Commons (CC) licence approach and zero embargo periods for sharing Accepted Manuscripts (AMs), is designed to meet the majority of funders’ and institutions’ open access policy requirements. However, authors should carefully check their funder and institutional obligations, including requirements for specific Creative Commons licences. For specific funder policies, see our guidance on funder policies and mandates.
- A very small number of journals have more restrictive policies than our standard Green OA policy. These policies may impose restrictions on the licences authors can apply to their AMs, and/or embargo periods before an AM can be made publicly accessible. You can review the details of these non-standard Green OA policies in the downloadable spreadsheet at the bottom of this page.
- During an embargo period you may upload your AM to a repository as a "closed deposit", but the full text must not be made publicly available until the embargo period ends.
- Before making any version of your article publicly available, you must ensure that you have the appropriate permission to include any third-party content, and clearly specify any parts of your article that are subject to different licence terms.
- We grant additional rights for authors to re-use their article content in subsequent publications where they are an author or editor; please see our rights and permissions FAQs for details.
This policy replaces all previous standard Green Open Access policies issued by Cambridge University Press, and the terms of this policy apply to all journal articles retrospectively. Where an author’s publishing agreement contains different terms to a journal’s Green OA policy, the more permissive terms will apply.
Terms and definitions
We use the following terms and definitions in our Green OA policies:
Article versions:
Types of websites:
What authors may post to websites and when
Authors are always permitted to share the metadata and abstract of any version of their articles in any repository.
Under Cambridge’s preprint policy, and our standard Green OA policy, authors are also permitted to share the following versions of their journal articles in any repository, at any time, under any licence:
- Preprint
- Submitted Manuscript Under Review
- Accepted Manuscript **
We recommend Creative Commons licences as these give a simple, internationally recognised framework that tells others how they may use, share, and build on your work, while still ensuring you receive proper attribution.
** Please note that some journals operate a workflow whereby Cambridge University Press publishes an Accepted Manuscript on cambridge.org when the article enters the production cycle. This is a separate process to what authors are permitted to do under our Green OA policy; please see "What is accepted manuscript publication?" in our production FAQs for more information.
How you may share your Version of Record will depend on the publishing agreement you signed with Cambridge.
Articles published under non-exclusive licences
If you publish your article Gold Open Access in a Cambridge journal, in most cases you will sign a non-exclusive licence to publish. Under this kind of licence, all copyright in the article remains unchanged. This means that if you own all the copyright in your article, you are always free to re-use and share any version of your article, for any purpose, at any time, under any licence.
Please note however that if any of the copyright in your article is owned by someone else – for example if your article includes images you've obtained from a third party – you may need their permission to share those parts of your article outside of the journal your article was published in. Please see our guidance for authors on seeking permission to re-use copyrighted material.
Articles published under exclusive licences
If you publish an article with Cambridge that is not Gold Open Access, you will usually sign an exclusive licence to publish. Under these kinds of publishing agreements, if you want to share your Version of Record outside of the journal it was published in, you will need written permission from Cambridge and any other rights holders, such as any third parties that own any of the copyright in your article. Please see our guidance for authors on seeking permission to re-use copyrighted material.
Green OA citation policy
When sharing articles in repositories, you must include:
- If the VoR has not yet been published on Cambridge Core, a clear statement that the material has been accepted for publication in a revised form, with a link to the journal's homepage on Cambridge Core.
- If the VoR has been published by Cambridge, a link to the article on Cambridge Core, using the article's DOI.
- A clear statement of the licence terms under which you have shared this version of your article, for example:
- This article has been published in a revised form in [Journal] at [http://doi.org/XXX]. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. © [Copyright holder(s)].
- This article has been published in a revised form in [Journal] at [http://doi.org/XXX]. This version is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. No commercial re-distribution or re-use allowed. Derivative works cannot be distributed. © [Copyright holder(s)].
Please ensure that you have appropriate permission to include any third-party content under your chosen licence, and/or clearly specify any parts of your article that are subject to different licence terms.