Open Access Policy

OSA Publishing is committed to the Society's mission to promote the generation, application and archiving of knowledge in optics and photonics and to disseminate this knowledge worldwide. Our journals publish quality, trusted scientific content, and we support sustainable models of access that enable the long-term provision of and access to that content for the widest audience possible.

OSA Publishing launched its first gold open-access journal, Optics Express, in 1997. More than twenty years on, our program offers a range of gold and green open access options as well as multiple copyright and licensing options.

Gold Open Access Publishing

Biomedical Optics Express, Optica, Optical Materials Express, Optics Express, and OSA Continuum are all gold open access journals. As a result of the authors paying an article processing charge (APC), all content published in these journals is freely available. Beginning with content published in September 2017, we allow users of our gold open access journals 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 OSA Publishing or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. Authors may also opt to make their articles freely available in our hybrid journals, Applied Optics, Journal of the Optical Society A, Journal of the Optical Society B, Optics Letters, and Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.

Green Open Access Publishing

OSA Publishing also supports green open access publishing. Authors who publish in one of our subscription journals are welcome to make their accepted manuscript available after a 12-month embargo period.

Licensing

OSA offers two open access licensing options for our authors; an open access publishing agreement, and, where required, CC BY licensing.
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Fees and refund policy

OSA's open access journals are freely and widely available to all readers via OSA Publishing's Digital Library. In lieu of paid subscriptions, authors or their institutions pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) after their paper has been accepted for publication.
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Posting and reuse policies

OSA's policies afford authors, their employers, and third parties the right to reuse the author's Accepted Manuscript (AM) or the final published Version of Record (VoR) of the article as outlined.
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Article Deposit Policies

OSA assists authors in complying with several funder deposit requirements.
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