Open Access and Licensing Policy

1. Purpose and scope

This policy applies to scholarly articles and other content that Eldran Academic Press designates as open access. It should be read together with the Copyright Statement, APC & Waiver Policy, Author Guidelines, Peer Review Policy, Research Integrity Policy, Privacy Policy, and Corrections & Retractions Policy.

Open access concerns access and reuse rights; it does not reduce editorial, peer review, research-integrity, reporting, ethics, or quality requirements. An article is accepted because it meets the journal's scholarly and ethical standards, not because it is open access or because an APC is payable.

2. Eldran open access model

Eldran uses a gold open access model. The final published article is openly accessible on the journal website at the point of publication. Readers do not need a paid subscription to read the Version of Record.

Eldran's approach is informed by established open-access principles that seek to remove price and permission barriers while preserving attribution, scholarly quality and long-term availability. Eldran does not claim to be a signatory or member of an external organisation merely because its guidance is referenced in this policy.

3. Immediate and permanent access

• No reader subscription or pay-per-view charge is imposed for access to the open Version of Record.
• No embargo is applied to the final open-access article unless a specific legal, ethical, privacy or third-party-rights restriction requires limited treatment of particular material.
• Articles remain accessible after correction or retraction; the scholarly record is updated through transparent notices rather than silently removed, except in rare cases where legal, privacy or serious safety grounds require removal of content.
• Access to supplementary files follows the same principle unless a file contains material that cannot lawfully or ethically be made public.

4. Copyright ownership

Unless a specific article states otherwise, authors retain copyright in their scholarly work. By publishing with Eldran, the author or authorised rightsholder grants Eldran a non-exclusive licence to publish, reproduce, communicate, distribute, preserve, index, format and identify the Version of Record and associated metadata.

Because the publication licence is non-exclusive, authors remain free to use their own work in teaching, future scholarship, institutional repositories, books, presentations, grant reports and other lawful contexts, subject to the CC BY 4.0 terms and any third-party rights.

5. CC BY 4.0 licence

The default licence for Eldran scholarly articles is the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Under that licence, users may share and adapt the licensed material for any purpose, including commercial purposes, provided the licence conditions are followed.

• Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• CC BY 4.0 legal code: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.en

The Creative Commons deed requires appropriate credit, a link to the licence and an indication of whether changes were made. The licence does not remove other rights that may apply, including privacy, publicity, moral, database, confidentiality or third-party intellectual-property rights.

6. Attribution and responsible reuse

A reasonable attribution to an Eldran article should, where available, identify the author(s), article title, journal, publication year, DOI or persistent URL, and the CC BY 4.0 licence. Adaptations should clearly indicate that changes were made and must not imply that the authors, journal or Eldran endorse the adaptation or its conclusions.

Citation norms remain important even where the legal licence permits reuse. Reusers should cite the original scholarly source in a manner appropriate to the discipline and should not present modified findings, figures, translations or summaries as the authors' unchanged work.

7. Third-party material

CC BY 4.0 applies only to material for which the article or rights statement indicates that Eldran or the authors have authority to license it. Photographs, maps, questionnaires, artworks, scales, datasets, excerpts, screenshots and other third-party material may be excluded from the article licence.

Where material is excluded, the caption or credit line should identify the applicable rightsholder or licence. A user who wishes to reuse excluded material must obtain any permission required by law from the relevant rightsholder.

8. Author self-archiving and repositories

Eldran permits authors to deposit their work in institutional, subject, funder, personal or other lawful repositories. Authors may deposit preprints, accepted manuscripts and the published Version of Record, subject to the conditions below.

• The Version of Record should be deposited with its DOI or permanent article URL where available.
• The repository record should identify the Eldran journal and make clear which version has been deposited.
• No Eldran embargo is imposed on repository deposit of the Version of Record under CC BY 4.0.
• Third-party content excluded from CC BY 4.0 must remain subject to its own rights statement.
• Repository copies should link to corrections, retractions or updated notices when those exist.

9. Preprints and accepted manuscripts

Legitimate preprint posting does not ordinarily prevent submission to an Eldran journal. Authors must disclose relevant preprints during submission and should update the preprint record after publication with the citation and link to the Version of Record.

Authors may archive the author-accepted manuscript after acceptance. Where the final Version of Record is available, Eldran encourages repositories to link users to it because it contains the definitive pagination or article number, copyediting, metadata, corrections, licensing information and persistent identifier.

10. Article processing charges

Open access publishing has operational costs. Eldran may support publication through article processing charges (APCs), institutional arrangements, sponsorship, waivers, publisher investment or other transparent sources. The applicable APC, if any, is stated publicly on the relevant journal website and should be known before an author completes submission.

• Eldran does not charge a submission fee unless a journal explicitly states otherwise before submission.
• An APC is not payable merely because a manuscript is submitted or sent for peer review.
• Where an APC applies, invoicing occurs only after the manuscript has received an editorial acceptance decision and any required final validation.
• Taxes, currency, payment method and any eligible waiver or discount should be communicated transparently before payment.

11. Waivers, discounts and equity

Eldran may grant full or partial APC waivers under its APC & Waiver Policy. Requests should be assessed using published criteria and handled independently from the scholarly decision wherever operationally possible.

An author's country, institution, funding position or inability to pay must not be used as a proxy for scholarly quality. Authors should not avoid disclosing genuine funding merely to seek a waiver, and waiver information must not be used to pressure editors.

12. Editorial independence from payment

Non-negotiable separation Editors and reviewers do not accept or reject manuscripts on the basis of APC revenue, waiver status, an author's ability to pay, a commercial relationship, institutional prestige, or a target acceptance rate. Payment processing follows the editorial decision; it does not produce the editorial decision.

Where an editor becomes aware of a financial relationship that could reasonably create a conflict, the matter should be disclosed and the manuscript reassigned when appropriate.

13. Open metadata and discoverability

Eldran aims to make article metadata as reusable and discoverable as practical. Bibliographic metadata may be supplied to indexing, preservation, library, DOI, search and discovery services. Where technically supported, Eldran may dedicate bibliographic metadata to the public domain under CC0 1.0 to facilitate discovery and machine reuse.

• Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

The licence that applies to metadata does not automatically change the licence of the article text, figures or supplementary material.

14. Text and data mining

The CC BY 4.0 licence permits computational reuse of licensed article content, subject to attribution and other applicable legal rights. Researchers and service providers conducting text and data mining should use reasonable request rates, identify automated traffic where appropriate, respect technical security controls, and avoid degrading the availability of Eldran services.

Nothing in this section authorises circumvention of access controls protecting confidential submissions, peer-review records, personal data, restricted supplementary material or administrative systems.

15. Version of Record, corrections and retractions

The Version of Record is the final article published by the journal. Corrections, expressions of concern, retractions and other post-publication notices remain openly accessible and are linked to the affected article so that readers can understand the status of the scholarly record.

A retracted article is ordinarily retained with a clear retraction notice rather than deleted. Removal may be considered only in exceptional circumstances involving legal requirements, privacy, serious harm or content that cannot safely remain available.

16. Funder and institutional requirements

Authors are responsible for informing Eldran of relevant funder, institutional, grant or repository requirements. Eldran's immediate CC BY 4.0 model is designed to support broad reuse and repository deposit, but authors should confirm any funder-specific wording, metadata, repository or acknowledgement obligations that apply to their award.

Eldran will not claim compliance with a specific funder, index or initiative until the relevant requirements have actually been satisfied.

17. Accessibility and usability

Free access alone does not ensure usable access. Eldran aims to publish HTML, PDF and web interfaces that are navigable, readable and compatible with assistive technologies, and to work toward WCAG 2.2 AA across the public platform. Authors should provide meaningful figure captions and alternative text where requested.

18. Preservation and continuity

Eldran intends to maintain backups and preservation arrangements so that published scholarly content remains available if systems change. The publisher may use reputable preservation, repository, library or archiving services as they become operational. Any specific preservation partnership will be named publicly only after it has been established.

19. Misuse of the Eldran name and trademarks

Open licensing of article content does not grant permission to use Eldran Academic Press names, journal titles, logos, trade dress or other brand elements in a way that implies endorsement, sponsorship, partnership or authorship. Publisher and journal branding remains subject to separate trademark and website terms.

20. Policy changes

Material changes to this policy should be dated and recorded in Eldran's Summary of Changes. Changes to future publication terms do not retroactively revoke an open licence already granted for a published article.

21. External open-access resources

• Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities: https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration
• Budapest Open Access Initiative: https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/
• Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOAJ/COPE/OASPA/WAME): https://doaj.org/apply/transparency/
• DOAJ Guide to applying and open-access best practices: https://doaj.org/apply/guide/

22. Scholarly identifiers metadata and discovery

Article content and bibliographic metadata are governed separately. The default licence for published article content is CC BY 4.0. Where Eldran releases eligible bibliographic metadata under CC0 1.0 Universal, that dedication applies to the identified metadata and does not place the article text, figures or third-party material in the public domain.

Eldran may use persistent identifiers and external discovery services to improve citation, linking and access. References to Crossref, ORCID, Google Scholar or DOAJ describe relevant infrastructure or guidance unless a page expressly states a verified operational or indexing status. Eldran must not publish an Indexed in, Member of or Registered with claim until the corresponding status is active and documented.

• Crossref: https://www.crossref.org/
• Crossref DOI resolver: https://doi.org/
• ORCID: https://orcid.org/
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/
• Google Scholar inclusion guidance: https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html
• Directory of Open Access Journals: https://doaj.org/

23. Related policies

These pages provide the related publisher-level requirements and should be read together with this document where their subject matter applies.

• APCs and Waivers: https://eldranacademic.com/policies/apcs-and-waivers/
• Copyright and Licensing: https://eldranacademic.com/policies/copyright/
• Author Guidelines: https://eldranacademic.com/author-guidelines/
• Terms and Conditions: https://eldranacademic.com/policies/terms/
• Corrections and Retractions: https://eldranacademic.com/policies/corrections-and-retractions/