Open Access refers to unrestricted free access to scientific publications on the internet. Interested parties can read, download, copy, distribute, print, and refer to the full texts without financial, legal, or technical barriers. Excerpts and summaries may be made and digitally distributed provided appropriate authorship identification is made. The authors retain the copyright to their contributions.
Hybrid Open Access: Articles are published in subscription journals, i.e. journals for which subscription fees must be paid to gain access to the full texts. Authors can “buy out” their articles by paying a publication fee, so-called Article Processing Charges (APC), and thus make them freely accessible, as with gold Open Access.
Gold Open Access: Articles are published in original scientific open access journals against payment of a publication fee and are immediately available and freely accessible.