Open Access Policy (English)

Open Access means free and unrestricted access to scientific knowledge, as defined in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna co-signed the declaration and implemented it as part of its institutional policy. 

The OA movement stems from the academic world and aims at taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the internet and the digital world to disseminate and share research outputs (especially those of basic research), without any barriers or restrictions. It developed as an opportunity for research to grow and advance through shared knowledge, dissemination, and free access to the results obtained by other researchers. 

OA amplifies the impact of academic literature, promotes public engagement, and facilitates digital innovation. The aim of this page is to help all parties involved understand the Open Access policy of Bononia University Press.

There are two main publishing routes to OA, called Green and Gold: 

• Green OA consists in publishing contributions that are either in preprint format – meaning that the content has yet to undergo refereeing and final editing, – or that have already appeared in journals, books or series, in accordance with traditional commercial editorial standards. They are deposited in appropriate online repositories only after a certain time delay or ‘embargo’ has elapsed, for universal access and long-term conservation 
• Gold OA, on the other hand, means that a contribution is freely available through OA upon publication. Some journals may charge authors fees termed Article Processing Charges (APC) in order for their articles to be published. These fees cover editorial and publication costs. Alternatively, OA may be entirely subsidised or funded by the submitting author’s institution or other research institutions: in this way, the contribution is made available free of charge for all parties involved. This form of Gold OA without fees is called Platinum (or Diamond) OA. 

Bononia University Press supports and is committed to promoting Platinum and Gold OA publishing. We have developed an integrated OA publishing system that meets the needs of all fields of knowledge. We work with Authors and Funding Institutions to ensure that all necessary requirements of our agreements are fulfilled. Under a shared policy, our journals do not charge Authors fees for the submission or request for publication of their contributions. 

All OA works available on our publishing platform buponline.com are marked by an Open Access logo. 

Open Access Journals 

Our journals are published in Gold or Platinum OA: their content is made freely and openly available, with no access barriers or registration required.  

Our journals publish their content on proprietary or independent website domains. The most common file format for downloading peer-reviewed content is PDF, but some journals also make XML or HTML formats available. Where possible, printed versions are available for purchase on our e-commerce at buponline.com or via subscription. For a full list of our OA journals, please visit here. All content (articles) published in our OA journals is indexed through the assignment of a unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier).

Open Access Books

While OA has become a standard approach for the publication of scientific journals in bibliometric and non-bibliometric areas, this is not the case for academic books: in this regard, OA is an evolving approach, and paths to sustainability are still being defined. Bononia University Press has been publishing OA books since the end of 2019. We work alongside other institutions to face practical challenges such as contract terms and economic sustainability so that OA benefits all users: authors, researchers, students, and readers the world over. 

OA books edited by Bononia University Press are published on our buponline.com platform: full PDF and/or EPUB versions are available for download, offline reading, or printing, without any access barriers (e.g. login). When the content type and the agreements with Authors and/or Funding Institutions allow it, printed copies of our OA books are also available for purchase. 

Peer Review

All content published in our journals and book series is subject to peer review. Peer review is carried out either through a professional digital publishing platform or by the editorial board of the journal or book series. All OA content keeps its editorial autonomy: since it covers a wide range of knowledge areas, a shared standardization of the processes would not be applicable. More specifically, each Journal or Book Series identifies and publishes its own guidelines to manage the relationships with authors and set out the editorial guidelines and where possible, adopts its own policy for online indexing.

Generally, each of the manuscripts submitted to Bononia University Press is assessed by its editors with regard to its compatibility with our catalogue, or to the editorial initiatives launched with university Departments. 

After the manuscript is validated, it undergoes the double-blind peer review process. Thus, the manuscript is anonymously submitted to a scientific committee of a specific book series or reference discipline. The committee reviews the work or provides the names of the two external reviewers. The scientific validity, originality of the argument, and quality of the presentation are assessed. Any modifications, integrations, or corrections to the manuscript will also be suggested by the committee.

If the manuscript receives two positive reviews, it will undergo editing by the editorial team of our Publishing Company and then be published according to our OA standards.

If it receives both a positive review and a negative one, the manuscript may be rejected or referred to a third reviewer, who shall decide on the final admissibility.

License & Copyright 

All our OA content, whether books, articles or journals, is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC) license, or under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) license. More specifically, OA books are published under a CC BY-NC-SA license. 

Other licenses may be taken into consideration, provided that policies regulating the standards of OA publishing are maintained. Licenses may vary according to the discipline or the institution of origin and are generally customised to suit the specific features of each journal. Check the ‘Instructions for Authors’ page of each of our journals to find out which licenses apply. 

The Author(s) therefore grant(s) Bononia University Press all rights to their Contribution, including but not limited to the right to publish, republish, transmit, sell, distribute, and otherwise use the Contribution and the material contained therein in electronic and/or printed editions. Authorship of the work is always acknowledged to the Author. 

Report & Services

We are committed to providing as much information as possible on the dissemination of our OA content. This information may take the form of periodical reports and is generally available upon request before signing the agreements. 

• Website traffic statistics (that is, the number of visited or downloaded pages) via Google Analytics 
• Usage reports from other platforms hosting our OA titles, if available 
• Statistics on the use of DOI queries via Crossref 
• Altimetrics, Indexing, and Impact Factor (citations of the work on social media or in research aggregators) 

We are also available to develop indexing plans in the main aggregators, databases, and on scientific search engines, in accordance with the subject and field of knowledge of the publication. 

Our services for Open Access publication