Accessible scholarship
AHFE supports open scholarly communication so published research can be read and shared broadly, subject to the license and publication terms associated with each article.
Author and reader clarity
License, copyright and reuse information should be stated clearly on published articles. Authors remain responsible for ensuring that third-party material can be published under the applicable terms.
Connected AHFE ecosystem
AHFE Open Access already provides openly available peer-reviewed conference proceedings. The Discovery Journal extends the AHFE publishing ecosystem through a continuous journal model.
Reading access and author rights
Open access is designed to remove reader subscription barriers for published articles. Reuse still depends on the licence assigned to each article and on any third-party rights explicitly reserved. Authors should verify the final copyright and licensing statements rather than assume all material has identical reuse permission.
Open access is not automatic acceptance
The funding model for publication is separate from editorial evaluation. Each manuscript must satisfy scientific and integrity standards before it can be published. Where an APC applies, its terms should be disclosed independently of reviewer judgment.
The relationship to conference proceedings
A journal submission and an AHFE conference proceeding are separate scholarly products. Authors adapting conference research should disclose related prior publication and explain the substantive additional contribution. Republishing the same content without appropriate citation, permissions or added scholarly value may create duplicate-publication problems.