Open access refers to the free and permanent unrestricted online access to scholarly research. Authors retain copyright to their work, and a licence is applied which allows users to download, copy, reuse and distribute the work provided the original article is fully cited.
Open access differs from free online access as it provides reuse rights provided full attribution is given while authors retain copyright to their work.
Gold open access is where the version of record (final published article) is made freely available online immediately and permanently. Many journals charge an Article Processing Charge (APC) for gold open access. Licence alternatives: CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution License) CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License) CC-BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial No Derivative Works License).
Green open access allows a version of the peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript to be made freely available via an institutional or discipline-specific repository. Publishers may impose an embargo on an author sharing their paper in this way. Funder requirements Your funder or institution may require you to publish gold or green open access.
The Society publishes one fully gold open access journal, the Transactions. The remaining titles, Bulletin, Journal, Proceedings, Journal of Topology, Mathematika, Compositio Mathematica and Nonlinearity are hybrid journals.
The Society publishes five hybrid journals where the majority of the papers are available under subscription access but which also offer authors the option to publish gold open access.
These journals also allow green open access. Authors are permitted to self-archive the peer-reviewed (but not final) version of their article on their personal website, in an institutional repository or archive, and in certain not for profit subject-based repositories such as the arXiv. Please see the relevant author license for any conditions on such a deposit.
- Compliance in LMS journals
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Before submitting an article authors should check any open access policy set by their funding body to ensure that their journal of choice supports publication under a model that meets their funding obligations.
If compliance can only be achieved via the "gold" route then authors should also check whether they can access the support of any article processing charges. All of the Society's publishing partners have multiple agreements in place with funders and institutions worldwide which cover APCs at no additional cost to the author. Typically eligibility is determined by the corresponding author's institution on acceptance.
- Wiley (for the Bulletin, Journal, Proceedings, Transactions, Journal of Topology and Mathematika)
- Cambridge University Press (for Compositio Mathematica)
- Institute of Physics Publishing (for Nonlinearity)
For authors not opting for open access, they will instead be asked to sign an exclusive license agreement. This sets out where authors may post different versions of their article.
Exclusive License agreements
- Example agreement (Wiley/LMS) for the Bulletin, Journal, Proceedings, Journal of Topology. Authors are permitted to self-archive the peer-reviewed (but not final) version of the Contribution on the Contributor’s personal website, in the Contributor’s company/institutional repository or archive, and in certain not for profit subject-based repositories such as arXiv as listed at the following website: http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html. There is no embargo on such a deposit.
- Example agreement for Compositio Mathematica
- Information on copyright for Nonlinearity
- UKRI Policy for papers submitted after 1 April 2022
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Journal articles
From 1 April 2022, UKRI-funded authors need to arrange for journal articles to be published immediately Open Access, with no embargo, under a CC BY licence and to contain a Data Access Statement
Authors must ensure that they have chose a journal which permits their paper to be made immediately open access under a CC BY licence by one of the following routes:
- Publish in a fully open access journal or platform;
- Publish in a subscription journal that is covered by a Transformative Agreement;
- Publish in a subscription journal which has been granted ‘Transformative Journal’ status by UKRI ;
- Publish in a subscription journal that is not covered by a Transformative Agreement, and make the accepted manuscript available in an institutional or subject-specific repository under a CC BY licence with zero embargo.
Authors can find out more by
- visiting UKRI’s website: https://www.ukri.org/publications/ukri-open-access-policy
- speaking to their institutional open access team to check whether they are eligible for publication through a Transformative Agreement.
- using the Sherpa Fact tool to check if compliance can be achieved with a particular journal.
Data Access Statement
When preparing UKRI-funded research articles for submission, authors must ensure that the paper contains a Data Access Statement. This requirement applies even where there are no data associated with the article.
Books
There is also a policy for monographs, book chapters and edited collections published after 1 January 2024.
The version of record or Author’s Accepted Manuscript must be free to view and download via an online publication platform, publishers’ website, or institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication under a CC-By licence.
These policies only apply to papers acknowledging UKRI funding. There is yet no policy for UK authors relating to the next REF.
- Open Access Transition
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During 2021 the LMS-owned journals published 67 open access articles which represents 30% of all articles published in that year.
