Open Access Policy

GHU Open is a fully open access journal committed to providing immediate, free, and unrestricted access to all published research. We believe that open access maximizes the impact of research, advances science, and serves the public good.

Our Definition of Open Access

GHU Open subscribes to the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access:

"By open access, we mean its immediate, free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself."

License

All articles published in GHU Open are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This license allows readers to:

Share: Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt: Remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial use

Subject to the following conditions:

Attribution: Appropriate credit must be given to the original authors and the source, a link to the license must be provided, and any changes must be indicated.
No additional restrictions: No legal terms or technological measures may legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

The full text of the license is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright

Authors retain copyright of their published work. They grant the journal a license to publish the article and the right of first publication. Authors are free to:

Deposit the published version in institutional or subject repositories
Post the article on personal or institutional websites
Reuse the article in books, theses, or other works
Translate the article into other languages

All reuse must include proper attribution to the original publication in GHU Open.

Self-Archiving Policy (SHERPA/RoMEO Compliance)

Pre-print: Authors may post the pre-print version (before peer review) at any time, provided that upon publication, they update the posting with the published article's DOI and citation.
Post-print (Accepted Manuscript): Authors may post the post-print version (after peer review, before final formatting) at any time without embargo.
Published version (Version of Record): Authors may post the published version at any time without embargo.

This policy aligns with Plan S Rights Retention Strategy and SHERPA/RoMEO "blue/green" classification.

Article Processing Charges (APC)

To support our open access publication model, GHU Open charges Article Processing Charges (APCs) only for accepted articles. APC details are provided on the Article Processing Charges page.

Launch Period (2026): All APCs are waived as part of our launch promotion. There is no fee to authors during this period.

From 2027, the journal will operate with reduced APCs (50% of standard rate). Standard APCs apply from 2028 onwards.

Waivers and discounts are available for authors from low- and middle-income countries (per World Bank classification) and for authors facing financial hardship. Requests are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Submission Fees

GHU Open does not charge any submission fees. There are no costs to authors for the editorial review process. APCs are charged only upon acceptance.

No Subscription Fees

Readers, libraries, and institutions are not required to pay any subscription, registration, or access fees to read articles published in GHU Open. All content is freely available immediately upon publication.

Long-Term Preservation

To ensure perpetual access to published content, GHU Open is committed to:

Digital preservation through PKP Preservation Network (PN)
Participation in LOCKSS and CLOCKSS networks
Deposit in Portico (planned)
National Library of Korea legal deposit

Indexing and Discoverability

To maximize discoverability of published content, GHU Open is committed to:

Free indexing in Google Scholar
OAI-PMH compliant metadata for harvesting
Application for inclusion in DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
Application for inclusion in KCI (Korea Citation Index)
Future application for Scopus and Web of Science
DOI assignment via Crossref for all articles
ORCID integration for unambiguous author identification

Plan S Compliance

GHU Open is designed to be fully compliant with Plan S requirements, including:

Immediate open access without embargo
CC BY 4.0 license
Author retention of copyright
Transparent APC pricing
Long-term preservation
Persistent identifiers (DOI, ORCID)

For more information about our open access policies, contact ghu@ghuopen.org.