AAPG Policy on Open Access Publishing

AAPG’s goal is to advance the science of Petroleum Geology to the international geological community and the public at large. Our publication program is one such means of accomplishing that goal. The concept of Open Access publishing is a rapidly evolving aspect of scholarly publishing, and AAPG’s open access policy is designed to provide a compliant outlet for those authors seeking an Open Access solution, and to be flexible in dealing with evolving needs in this area. An author’s choice of Open Access publishing in an AAPG Journal will have no bearing on the manuscript’s status during peer review. The following is intended to comply with UKRC policies on open access and thus make sure our publications are not blacklisted to authors who are obliged to use an open access publication. This policy will be modified from time to time based on review of other funding agency requirements.

Approved June 28, 2013, AAPG Executive Committee.

Author Publishing Options

Traditional

AAPG charges a fee to authors on a per page cost (see Submission Guidelines for fee structure). Copyright for manuscripts published under this model typically resides with AAPG, although under fair use provisions authors are allowed to post a copy of the final paper on their personal website.

Open Access Gold Model

For authors who choose this model of publishing, an Author Publication Charge (APC) of $2,500 will be levied per manuscript for the BULLETIN and ENVIRONMENTAL GEOSCIENCES journals, in addition to any required page charges outlined in the traditional model. This fee would be required prior to publication, but after peer review and acceptance. The final manuscript will be accessible free to the public via the AAPG Datapages archives and GeoScienceWorld, and will be clearly flagged as Open Access both online and wherever available in print format. Copyright in the manuscript will be covered by Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY. A similar policy will apply to book manuscripts: the APC charge will typically be similar to that for the journals, but may vary based on the article length and the proportion of Open Access manuscripts in the whole book.

Open Access Green Model

Under the Green Model no Author Publication Charge is required. The BULLETIN will still impose page charges, as applicable. The manuscript will be published as with the traditional model; however, authors will be allowed to place a post-peer reviewed version of the manuscript in their institutional repository, a subject-based repository or personal website no earlier than twelve months after publication. This author-posted manuscript cannot be the final version published in the journal or book. Copyright can remain with the author if requested, and the manuscript will then be covered by Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY or other licenses as required by various funding agencies.

Subscription Fees

When the amount of Open Access material reaches a level of 15% of the total content for a journal in any given year, subscription fees will be re-evaluated annually and discounted based on the amount of Open Access content in each journal.