Open Access

There are two main options:

• Green Open Access: Deposit your research output in an open access repository such as an institutional repository (e.g. NIE Digital Repository) or a disciplinary repository. Availability of your publications or research output depends on the self-archiving policy of publishers.
   
• Gold Open Access:  Publish in an open access publication or a hybrid journal. This usually involves payment of Article Processing Fee upon acceptance for publishing.

Overlay journals are a type of scholarly journal that operates differently from traditional journals. In an overlay journal, the publication process is decoupled from the dissemination process. Here's how it works:

1. Publication in Preprint Servers: Authors first publish their research articles in preprint servers, which are online platforms where researchers can share their work before formal peer review.

2. Evaluation and Certification: Overlay journals do not conduct traditional peer review themselves. Instead, they rely on preprints that have already been posted on preprint servers. Editors or an editorial board evaluate these preprints and decide whether to "overlay" a journal's certification on the preprint. This certification signifies that the content has been reviewed and meets the journal's quality standards.

3. Linking and Aggregating: Overlay journals do not host articles themselves. They typically consist of a website or platform that links to the preprints hosted on preprint servers. The overlay journal provides a structured, quality-controlled interface for readers to access the certified preprints.

4. Open Access: Overlay journals are usually open access, meaning that the certified content is freely available to anyone.

Overlay journals are designed to take advantage of the speed and openness of preprint servers while adding a layer of quality control and organization to the process. They aim to make research more accessible and to shift the focus from the traditional publishing model to the quality and rigor of the research itself.

Publishing via the Gold Open Access route allows free, immediate access to your research papers upon publication.

You may choose to publish in an open access journal or a hybrid journal.

• Open Access Journals make their content freely available upon publication. The publishers of these journals may or may not charge an Article Processing Fee. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes and provides access to a list of quality open access, peer-reviewed journals at http://doaj.org. Members of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association can be viewed at http://oaspa.org.
   
• Hybrid Journals are usually subscription-based journals that provide an open access option to authors. The authors may choose to pay the Article Processing Fee (upon acceptance of paper) to the publishers to make their papers available to non-subscribers.

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Publishing via Diamond Open Access route also allows free, immediate access to your research papers upon publication.

Unlike the Gold (publisher) and Green (repository) OA routes, Diamond journals don't require Article Processing Charges (APCs) paid by authors or subscription fees paid by libraries to cover the cost of publishing.

Diamond journals rely on their research community and volunteers and are usually funded by universities, governments, societies or associations to make the research they publish freely available online.

Bronze Open Access represents a middle ground between traditional subscription-based publishing and full open access. In this model, specific articles or content within a journal are made freely accessible to the public, while the majority of the content remains behind a paywall. This partial open access is often determined by the publisher, taking into account factors such as funding sources or author preferences.

Bronze Open Access is less common and less transparent than Gold Open Access, where all content in a journal is freely available, or Green Open Access, where authors self-archive their work in institutional repositories. It's important for readers and authors to carefully check the access policies of individual journals or repositories to understand what level of open access is provided.