Acceptance date: the date upon which notification is received from the journal editor that the output has been ‘firmly accepted’ (as opposed to ‘provisional’ acceptance dependent on further revisions/review).
Advance Online Publication - Some publishers enable articles to be published online as soon as they have been fully copy-edited and proof-checked, ahead of the final, ‘printed’ version. This version of the article is in exactly the same format as they appear in the final issue except for page numbering. Any embargo periods pertaining to Open Access start from this release date. Also known as Early online version or First online publication.
Article Processing Charge (APC): Fee which may be payable to the publisher to publish via the Gold Open Access route. When an article is published in a traditional subscription journal, the author pays an APC to make their individual article freely available from the journal website, without restriction or charge to the reader.
Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM)/post-print: The author’s final version of an article, including changes agreed during peer review but without the publisher’s typesetting or logos.
Corresponding Author: The author responsible for manuscript correction, correspondence during submission, handling of revisions and re-submission of the revised manuscript. On acceptance of the manuscript, the corresponding author is responsible for co-ordinating any application for payment of a Gold Open Access Article Processing Charge (APC).
Creative Commons Licences: Licences which can be used in open access publishing to help authors retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make use of their work. There are several different Creative Commons licences, which allow different types of re-use. See the Creative Commons website
DOI - Digital Object Identifier - A unique identifier for an online document, used by most online journal publishers. As the DOI is unique to the publication, linking to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL.
Early online version: Many publishers release articles online as soon as they have been fully copy-edited and proof-checked, ahead of the final, ‘printed’ version. This version of the article is in exactly the same format as they appear in the final issue except for page numbering and volume/issue details. Also known as Advance online publication or First online publication
Embargo period: Restriction imposed by publishers delaying when an article can be made open access.
Gold Open Access: the type of open access where the final published version of an article/conference proceeding is made immediately available by the publisher to download, redistribute, and reuse from the date of publication.
Green Open Access: the type of open access where the Author Accepted version of an article/conference proceeding is made available, usually via an institutional repository such as Goldsmiths Research Online, either immediately on publication or after an embargo period.
Hybrid journal: Journal where subscriptions are still required for access to most of the content, but offer an option to make individual articles available as Open Access after payment of an additional fee by authors, their institutions or research funders.
Institutional repository: Online digital archive of an institution’s research publications.
ISSN: International Standard Serial Number, an 8 digit unique identifying number for journals, magazines and newspapers.
ORCID: Open Researcher and Contributor ID, a unique identifying number that distinguishes academics (and their work) from other researchers with a similar or identical name.
Predatory publisher: ‘Publisher’ that offers to publish academics' work ‘Open Access’ usually for a fee but are in fact not reputable or ‘Open Access’.
Pre-Print/submitted version: The version of a research output that is of sufficient quality to be submitted for publication but has not been through peer-review.
Publication date: The earliest date on which the final version of an output is publicly available. This includes early online release so may be earlier than the date of print publication.
Publisher Agreement: When you publish your paper you will probably sign a 'publisher agreement’. This document states your rights as an author, so it is always worthwhile keeping a copy. On the publisher agreement it should state whether you can make your article available on our institutional repository.
Publishers PDF/Version of Record (VoR): the final version of a research output that has been made available by a publisher. This version will have been copy-edited and typeset by the publisher and includes their logos and formatting.
Read & Publish Agreement: also known as a transformative agreement, this is a subscription agreement with a publisher that also includes an amount of Gold Open Access for the institution’s authors.
Research Excellence Framework (REF): The current system for assessing research in UK higher education institutions which is carried out every six or seven years. REF 2014 was the first REF, and the second REF is currently underway as REF 2021
Self-archiving: The process by which an academic author deposits the metadata (bibliographic reference, abstract, etc.) and an electronic full text for one or more of his/her publications in an Open Access repository (like Goldsmiths Research Online).