Open Access policy

As a membership charity and independent publisher, the Microbiology Society supports sustainable Open Access (OA) models which maintain the scholarly publishing environment that is fundamental to how microbiologists improve, validate and share their research. OA policies for our own academic journals reflect these values.

We offer the following routes to OA across the entire Society portfolio of journals:

Gold OA

Gold OA allows authors to make published articles immediately available online under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence. This is optional for Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology and International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and standard in Microbial Genomics and Access Microbiology. See Open Access rates for more information about Article Processing Charges associated with Gold OA.

Green OA: articles before submission

A 'pre-print' is an early version of the scientific article that has not been through peer review before being posted online. The Microbiology Society encourages authors to deposit a pre-print either in their institutional repository or in the pre-print server bioRxiv. Our journals accept direct submissions from bioRxiv, ensuring a quick and easy submission process, but if you choose to use a different server please provide a clear link to the pre-print in the submission form.

If your article is accepted, we ask that you update your pre-print to include a link to the final published article, known as the Version of Record. The link should read:

'© [name of Author(s), year]. The definitive peer reviewed, edited version of this article is published in [name of Journal, volume, issue, year, DOI].'

Green OA: accepted articles

An Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is the accepted version of a scientific article, which includes modifications based on reviewers’ suggestions but has not been copyedited or typeset. The Microbiology Society encourages authors to deposit their AAM either in their institutional repository or in a recognised subject repository such as PubMed Central. Authors are entitled to deposit their AAM on the day of publication (sometimes called ‘embargo-free’), under a CC-BY licence: this complies with all funder and institutional mandates. When depositing your AAM, please include an archiving statement on the title page and include a link to the final published article, known as the Version of Record. The statement should read:

'© [name of Author(s), year]. The definitive peer reviewed, edited version of this article is published in [name of Journal, volume, issue, year, DOI].'

We understand that some authors may wish to provide a translated abstract, or a full translation of their work, before depositing their AAM. This is acceptable under our policy, provided a link to the Version of Record is included in the translation.