Open Access and Licensing Statement

This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. 

At Dean & Francis Press, we firmly believe that research should be freely accessible to all, unbounded by financial constraints or institutional barriers. We have adopted the open access (OA) model to ensure that the scholarly works we publish are made available to everyone, everywhere, at any time.

• Definition of Open Access: As defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, open access refers to literature that is “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.”
• Licensing: All open access works published by Dean & Francis Press are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which allows authors to retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work. It mandates that the original authorship is appropriately acknowledged.
  
  
• Archiving: To ensure the long-term preservation of research, Dean & Francis Press deposits all open access content in a number of internationally recognized repositories.
  
  
• Accessibility: Open access content published by Dean & Francis Press is available immediately upon publication, ensuring that research is disseminated to the widest possible audience, facilitating greater visibility, impact, and citations for authors.
  
  
• Article Processing Charges (APC): To support the open access model, Dean & Francis Press charges an Article Processing Charge (APC) for open access publications. However, we are committed to ensuring that financial barriers do not prevent the publication of high-quality research. As such, we offer waivers and discounts for authors from low-income countries and underrepresented communities.
  
  
• Transparency and Quality: While we champion the open access model, our commitment to rigorous peer review and upholding the highest standards of editorial integrity remains unwavering. We ensure that every work we publish undergoes stringent review by experts in the field.
  
  
• Benefits to Authors: Open access ensures that an author’s work is disseminated more broadly, leading to increased visibility, readership, and potential for citations. Furthermore, the open nature of the content allows for interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.
  
  
• Public Good: We recognize that much scientific and academic research is publicly funded. It is our belief that the results of such research should be made freely available to the public, ensuring that society at large can benefit from these findings.

Dean & Francis Press is proud to support the open access movement and contribute to a more inclusive, global scholarly community. We stand by our authors, researchers, and readers, championing the cause of open knowledge for the betterment of society.