About Open Access and Open Science

Open Access Background

While its roots go back further, the formal beginning of the Open Access movement is often linked to the 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative, which advocated for free, unrestricted access to publicly funded research. It endorsed the principle of removing most copyright and licensing barriers in order to accelerate scientific progress and broaden readership. (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org)

Aligning with these emerging principles, IntechOpen’s co-founders, at the time active researchers in robotics, recognized the necessity of a more open model. Inspired by this global shift in thinking, they founded the company with the goal of creating a publishing environment "for scientists, by scientists," where research could be shared freely to maximize its contribution to scientific advancement.

Building on these foundations, we are committed to working with organisations and people who care about scientific discovery, putting the academic needs of the scientific community first, and providing an open access environment where scientists can maximise their contribution to scientific advancement. By opening up access to the world’s scientific research articles and book chapters, we aim to facilitate greater opportunities for collaboration, scientific discovery and progress. We subscribe wholeheartedly to the open access definition:

“By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its 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. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited” (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org)

Open Access Standards and Principles Followed by IntechOpen

OASPA

We have been a member of OASPA since 2019, meet all membership criteria, and follow their Code of Conduct.

Licenses

Book chapters published in edited volumes, and all journal articles, are distributed under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). There is no copyright transfer to the publisher, and the Authors retain exclusive copyright to their work. All Monographs/Compacts are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). Read more 

Peer Review Policy

All scientific works are peer reviewed prior to publishing to ensure unbiased and expert evaluation of scholarly work. Read more.

Research Integrity and Publication Ethics

We establish and maintain clear editorial guidelines and robust policies designed to prevent misconduct and promote ethical publishing practices. We utilise technological tools to detect issues early in the publishing process and address post-publication concerns through systematic checks, issuing corrections or retractions where fraud or misconduct is confirmed. Transparency is prioritised through open data, enhancing trust and reproducibility. Finally, we foster a culture of committment to research integrity and publication ethics, across the research and publishing process. Read more.

Accessibility

Our commitment to accessibility ensures that all readers, including those with disabilities, can access, read, and interact with content without barriers (HTML and PDF formats). This commitment reflects a broader goal of equity, inclusion, and compliance with global standards.

OA Publishing Fees

We are gold open access publisher. The publishing model employed by IntechOpen eliminates subscription charges and pay-per-view fees, enabling readers to access research at no cost. In order to sustain operations and keep our publications freely accessible, we levy an open access publishing fee for manuscripts, which helps us cover the costs of editorial work and the production of books. Read more.

Digital Archiving Policy

We are committed to ensuring the long-term preservation and availability of all scholarly research we publish. We employ various methods to fulfil our commitments to the scientific community. Our publications are preserved by the Croatian National Library (for publications prior to April 18, 2018) and the British Library (for publications published after April 18, 2018), as well as in the CLOCKSS archive, which preserves our entire catalogue.

DOAB

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a key platform promoting research by providing a searchable database of peer-reviewed, academic open access books from reputable publishers. Our full catalogue  is available in the DOAB.

OAI-PMH

As a firm believer in the wider dissemination of knowledge, we have supported the Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH Version 2.0) since 2012.

Access Policy

View more about our Access Policy here.

Open Science

Open science is transparent and accessible knowledge that is shared and developed through collaborative networks.

Open science is about increased rigour, accountability, and reproducibility in research. It is based on the principles of inclusion, fairness, equity, and sharing and ultimately seeks to change the way research is done, who is involved, and how it is valued. It aims to make research more open to participation, review/refutation, improvement, and (re)use so that the world can benefit from it.

Open science refers to conducting traditional science with increased transparency at various stages, such as openly sharing code and data. It implies a growing set of practices - within different disciplines - aiming at:

• Promoting open and publicly accessible education tools
• Transparency in experimental methodology, observation, and collection of data
• Reproducible research data and re-analysis
• Public availability and re-usability of scientific data
• Public accessibility and transparency of scientific communication
• Transparent peer-review and publishing practices
• Using web-based tools to facilitate scientific collaboration
• Supporting exchange of knowledge and research materials between disciplines
• Supporting exchange of knowledge and research materials between scientific communities and industry.

We aim at improving the quality and availability of scholarly communication by promoting and practicing:

• Open Access
• Open Data
• Open Metrics and Impact
• Open Source

Figshare

We have a partnership with Figshare and an available integration between IntechOpen Journals' data and Figshare’s repository infrastructure. We embrace opportunities to collaborate with partners who share our values. Open data and transparency in research are core to open science.

Open Science Hub

In our commitment to open science, we have created a dedicated hub featuring resources, videos, webinars, and useful materials for learning about and getting involved in transparent, open, and accessible research. Discover the hub here.