With over 2,500 journals, Taylor & Francis, is one of the largest academic publishers in the world. For this reason, we are interested in the Open Access (OA) models they are using, as well as how they deal with copyright.
Taylor & Francis Journals
Taylor & Francis journals currently fall under three categories: Open (Fully OA), Open Select (Hybrid OA) and Subscription (Not OA). Fully Open or Pure open access journals means that all of the articles in these journals are OA. For these journals, an article publishing charge (APC) is often applicable. Their Open Select option is a hybrid option meaning that an author can publish in a subscription journal and pay a charge, usually an APC or an article page processing charge (APPC) to make their article freely available online upon publication. The final category, Subscription, allows for Green Open Access, which is the archiving of an article on a website or in a repository. This is allowed for the accepted version of an article, which has been through peer review and has been accepted, but isn’t the final published article. This option is offered after an embargo period. The chart below shows the breakdown of the number of journals for each of these categories. The Open Select option accounts for most of the journals at 91%, while 93 (4%) journals are fully OA.
Of the fully open journals, 17/93 (18%) do not charge APCs. Additionally, APCs could not be found for 5 journals. The APCs of the journals that were found to charge them range from $200-$2000 in US dollars (USD) with the average being $922 and the mode being $1200. Some journals in this category have a different APC based on the length of the article and the type of creative commons license being used, these prices were not factored in to the average listed above.
An interesting model is being used by one group of fully OA journals by Cogent OA. Cogent journals, which account for 15/93 of the fully OA journals from Taylor & Francis operate a ‘pay what you want’ model. This means that authors are allowed to choose how much they contribute towards OA publishing based on their financial circumstances. Authors have the opportunity to state how much they want to contribute, if accepted for publication, during the submission process. In order to guarantee the integrity of peer review, the APC process is managed by the Cogent OA publishing team and not by journal editors or reviewers. Cogent OA states, “We believe strongly in the benefits of open access to scientific research and scholarship, and our APC policy is intended to help remove any barriers to its take-up around the world – leading to greater research impact for all.”
The APCs for the hybrid model were quite a bit higher than the ones for fully OA journals. 2142/2284 (94%) of these journals charge an APC of $2,950 USD (£1,788, €2,150). The rest of the journals in this category either charge a lower APC or charge an APPC instead.
Taylor & Francis: Copyright Statements
When publishing with a Taylor & Francis subscription journal, they ask the author to assign copyright to them. Alternatively, any author can also opt to retain their own copyright and sign a licence to publish. If the author chooses to assign copyright to Taylor & Francis, the author is asked to sign a publishing agreement.
In the case of open access journals it appears that Taylor & Francis is using the same author nominal copyright approach we first noticed when looking at Elsevier this year. Following is the text from the T&F Author Services page. An exclusive license to publish is in effect a transfer of virtually all rights under copyright, with the copyright in the name of the author, hence “author nominal copyright”.
Open access Creative Commons licenses
We ask you to sign a publishing agreement to establish the originality and provenance of your article and to give us the exclusive right to publish [emphasis added] the Version of Record of your article; you (the author) retain copyright. This agreement incorporates the Creative Commons license of your choice, which will dictate what others can do with your article once it has been published.
Copyright statements tend to vary from journal to journal for Taylor & Francis’ OA journals. For example, Acta Biomaterialia Odontologica‘s Instructions for Authors document states, “The copyright will remain with the Authors for articles published under this Open Access model, and once a paper has been accepted for publication, Informa will ask authors for a license to publish.”
Similarly Acta Oto-Laryngologica Case Reports states, “All contributing authors are asked to grant Taylor & Francis the right to publish her or his article as the final, definitive, and citable Version of Scholarly Record. Authors are required to sign an Open Access Article Publishing Agreement to facilitate this. Articles published in Acta Oto-Laryngologica Case Reports are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence which permits others to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors do however have the choice of opting for the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial Licence should they so choose. Reuse conditions will be subject to the license type chosen by the author.”
The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology requires authors to assign the right to publish their texts both electronically and in any other format they see fit, along with the right to store manuscripts in an electronic archive to the journal, Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology. They go on to state, “Once published, authors may disseminate their papers (final, accepted and peer-reviewed PDF version) in whatever way they wish, within the terms set out in the Creative Commons Licence 4.0. The IPJP has adopted the CC BY-NC-ND licensing agreement. Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Accordingly, authors may post a copy of the PDF of their published article to their institutional repository or to any departmental or personal website, etc., subject to acknowledging its publication in the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology.”
In contrast to these above statements Journal of Drug Assessment states, “Articles are published with the understanding that their copyright be assigned to the Publisher once they are accepted. If any material used is subject to third-party copyright, copyright clearance is the sole responsibility of the authors and must be supplied in writing to the Publisher. Corresponding authors will be sent a copyright form to sign upon acknowledgment of their paper.”
These copyright statements are a small sample of how OA journals published by Taylor & Francis handle copyright. As they all differ, it is important for authors to understand their options and submit to journals accordingly. It may be assumed that authors retain their copyright when publishing in OA journals, but this is not always the case.
Cite as:
Wheatley, S. (2016). Taylor & Francis 2016. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/06/15/taylor-francis-2016/
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs 