What is changing about the publication model for BJPsych Bulletin and BJPsych International?

Open Access (OA) refers to making scholarly research freely available online for others to read. Typically, open access also allows readers to redistribute, re-use and adapt content in new works. Our open access programme serves authors and the wider community by publishing high quality, peer-reviewed content under a variety of Creative Commons (CC) licences.

Cambridge University Press has a helpful open access glossary for more information about terms used in open access publishing.

‘Diamond’ Open Access is the model we have been following up until now for BJPsych Bulletin and BJPsych International, where no fees are charged to readers, authors or their associated institutions. ‘Gold’ open access is the model we are moving to, where journals can receive external funding to support the costs of publication. In the case of BJPsych Bulletin and BJPsych International, this funding would only ever come from funders or from institutional arrangements – never from the personal funds of an individual author.

BJPsych and BJPsych Advances are hybrid journals, where authors can choose whether their article is open access or is only available to subscribers (including RCPsych members).

BJPsych Open is already fully Gold Open Access. As with BJPsych Bulletin and BJPsych International, we ensure that funding is never a barrier to publication in BJPsych Open.

No author will ever have to pay personally to publish in BJPsych Bulletin or BJPsych International.

The costs of publishing Gold Open Access (OA) can be covered in a number of ways. For some authors, their funding body or academic institution will have specific funds available to pay an article processing charge (APC). However, for authors who don’t have access to specific funding, multiple other funding routes for Gold Open Access are available, including open access agreements made between Cambridge University Press and individual institutions. Authors in low- and middle-income countries are automatically covered by Cambridge’s Open Equity Initiative.

For any author without specific funding and not covered under an existing agreement or initiative, a full waiver is guaranteed to be available and is simple and immediate to apply for once your article is accepted.

Article Processing Charges (APC) are fees paid to support Gold Open Access in cases where the costs of publication are not covered by other routes, such as institutional open access agreements or equity initiatives.

In the case of BJPsych Bulletin and BJPsych International, an APC would only be charged if an author’s funder or institution has made APC funding available for the work being published.

Any payment request for an APC is only made after an article has been accepted for publication.

Cambridge University Press’s standard APC for 2025 is £2,460 / US $3,550 (plus any applicable taxes).

RCPsych members are eligible for an APC discount of 25% when publishing in BJPsych Bulletin or BJPsych International. Just to emphasise, the question of paying an APC only arises if an author’s funder or institution has provided them with specific funds for this purpose, and they are not covered by another route, such as an institutional open access agreement or equity initiatives.

No author will ever have to pay personally to publish in BJPsych Bulletin or BJPsych International.

Articles should be submitted in the usual way via our online submission system and will undergo rigorous peer review and, if accepted, will be published in the normal way. All that will change is that manuscripts submitted to the journal after its ‘flip’ date may be required to be published as Gold Open Access. This means that after acceptance, if you are not covered by an institutional open access agreement or equity initiative, you will be asked to confirm whether you have access to APC funding or require a waiver.

If your article is already undergoing peer review on this ‘flip’ date, or if you have submitted your manuscript prior to this ‘flip’ date, then if accepted, your article may go on to be published in the journal’s first Gold Open Access Volume. In these cases, an APC will not be required for the article to be published Gold Open Access, and there will be no change to the peer review process or the publication process for your article as a result of the journal converting to its new policy on Gold Open Access.

If your article has already been published on FirstView but has not yet been included in an issue on this ‘flip’ date, you do not have to take any additional action.

There will be no change to the process by which the article gets published. Articles should be submitted in the usual way, following the journal-specific author instructions that can be found via the ‘Information’ section of the journal’s homepage. The article will undergo rigorous peer review. As an author, you can help influence the speed of publication by responding promptly to communications about your article during the production process.

For content that is to be published Gold Open Access, we offer authors a choice of Creative Commons licences that they can apply to their work, which allows free access to and redistribution of the content, and in many cases also allows re-use in new or derivative works. Note that authors might be required or advised by their funders to choose particular CC licences, such as CC-BY or CC-BY-ND, when publishing their research as Gold Open Access. For more information see Cambridge’s guidance on CC licences.

As with Diamond Open Access, publishing Gold Open Access means that the content is freely available online immediately upon publication, increasing the visibility and exposure of your article. It also means your article can be shared with readers globally without anyone having to pay to access it, expanding the accessibility of your article.

Anyone with internet access anywhere in the world can read Gold open access content without having to pay for a subscription.

Gold Open Access publication allows anyone to freely read, download and share content. Depending on the Creative Commons (CC) licence type applied to an article, readers may also be able to re-use and adapt the content in new works. For more information see Cambridge’s guidance on CC licences, and further information about the benefits of accessing content on Cambridge Core.

Each Gold Open Access article is clearly labelled with an open access symbol (an orange padlock with a dot inside) in the online table of contents for each issue of the journal and the article landing page.

The change to Gold Open Access will not affect how we manage print subscriptions. BJPsych International is already an online-only journal. BJPsych Bulletin will continue to produce print copies for members, which you can opt in to receive.