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Open Access refers to unrestricted online access to creative work or scholarship, typically coupled with reuse rights. These works are available to anyone in the world with an internet connection and a web browser. Payment is not required to access content.
A publication is considered Open Access if:
Gold OA refers to publications that are immediately 100% free and accessible to all. Some Gold OA journals require the authors to pay a fee to support this model read more under this guide's section on paying for open access.
Green OA refers to publications that are available as pre-prints or final peer-reviewed manuscripts, hosted in an institutional or subject repository, but the copyright of the final published manuscript may belong to the publisher. This model usually does not require authors pay a fee; authors need to discuss this option with their journal.
Article Processing Charges
Article processing charges (APCs) are fees paid to the publisher by or on behalf of the author, in exchange for publishing the article on an open access basis: without a paywall and (typically) with an open license such as one of the Creative Commons licenses. These fees vary from publisher to publisher, and range from as little as $1,000 to nearly $12,000 per article. APCs can be charged for articles in fully gold OA journals as well as hybrid journals.
Institutional or Transformative Agreements between schools and publishers allow for open access publishing without payment of APCs (Article Processing Charges).
CUNY has an Institutional Open Access Agreement with ACS (American Chemical Society) Journals. CUNY faculty and students publishing in journals covered by this agreement qualify for waivers of the article publishing charges. Visit this page for more information about the agreement, along with a list of included ACS journals.
CCNY Libraries has an Institutional Agreement with Cambridge University Press, which may cover SPH faculty and students. Click here to reach their eligibility tracker. You’ll be prompted to log in with your CUNY credentials. Enter “United States” for location/territory and “City College of New York” for institution. Then click on the “journals covered by this agreement” link for a complete list.
For more information about Institutional Agreements, please contact Rosemary Farrell, the SPH Librarian at library@sph.cuny.edu.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) updated Public Access Policy went into effect on July 1, 2025. This policy applies to peer-reviewed journal articles from all research funded in whole or in part by the NIH. Author Accepted Manuscripts accepted for publication in a journal, on or after July 1, 2025, must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication, for public availability without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication.
Read the complete 2024 NIH Public Access Policy here.
Click here to access UC Davis' NIH Public Access Policy Guide.
These Author's Alliance and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) guides are excellent resources on the topic.
Created by SPARC in conjunction with PLOS and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), the HowOpenIsIt? Open Access Guide standardizes Open Access terminology in an easily understandable, comprehensive resource. This guide provides a means to identify the core components of OA and how they are implemented across the spectrum between “Open Access” and “Closed Access”.