Open Access policies for journals published by the University of Pennsylvania Press are guided by the needs of individual journals, funder requirements, and discipline-based norms. The Press supports multiple modes of Open Access including those below:
- Platinum/Diamond Open Access (fully funded by a sponsor)
- Green Open Access. Authors may post the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) on their personal websites, on noncommercial discipline-specific servers of preprints or postprints, and within noncommercial digital repositories of nonprofit institutions with which they are currently affiliated. The Green Open Access route detailed here is compliant with policies from the US National Endowment for the Humanities, UK Research and Innovation and Plan S (as of 15 November 2024). The AAM is post-peer review but pre-copyediting and pre-typesetting. Most journals published by Penn Press do not enforce an embargo on the posting of the AAM; please check your author agreement for details. Journal authors may post a link to the version of record on Project MUSE or JSTOR when it is available along with source and copyright information. (Authors should post a link to an article rather than post a PDF; article views are an important factor in library purchasing decisions and by encouraging usage on the journal’s hosting platform, you demonstrate the journal’s value.) For more information, please visit our page on self-archiving and digital repositories.
- Select journals will likely have open-access content in 2025 as part of Project MUSE’s Subscribe to Open Program. This program opens current content without article processing charges if sales of Project MUSE’s collection reach a minimum sustainability threshold. Participating journals:
- Participation in the Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP). OACIP is a library-based crowdsourcing model to fund Platinum OA journals. Foucault Studies and Observational Studies have been accepted into this program for the next round of funding. Stakeholders’ investments will provide external copy-editing services and editorial office resources and will support the journal’s recent expansion from two issues per year to four.
Read more about the Foucault Studies funding opportunity.
Read more about the Observational Studies funding opportunity.
- Gold Open Access. For individual authors who have open-access mandates, please contact Jocelyn Dawson, Director of Journals, at jmdawson@upenn.edu to see if the journal in which you wish to publish accepts an author-processing charge (APC) or waiver to free a single article. Our waiver guidelines allow authors from countries classified as Group A or B by Research4Life, to publish their article free of charge if their funding body requires it and the Green Open Access option is insufficient.
Authors. Open Access policies vary by journal. Guidelines developed by Penn Press are responsive to changes in current research policy and we are happy to talk with authors to ensure compliance with mandates. Please see your author agreement and our Reusing Your Content page for details.
For questions about Penn Press’ rights and permissions policy for open-access articles, please visit our Rights and Permissions page.
If you have a question about Open Access journals at Penn Press, please contact Jocelyn Dawson, Director of Journals, at jmdawson@upenn.edu.