"Open Access" means that articles are freely accessible to read and download for everyone with internet access. There is no need for a subscription or an institutional license. There are no costs to readers. Publication costs are covered by a so-called "article publication charge" (APC), which is paid either by the author, their institution or the funding body which supported the research. 

Open access means free reading to users, but it is not without costs: submission systems, editorial processes – including organization of peer review –, production editing, typesetting, tagging, indexing, hosting on servers, archiving, and marketing etc. all cost money. The article publication charge (APC) is the contribution paid to help cover these costs. The APC would have to be paid upon acceptance of the author's manuscript or via alternative arrangements with institutions and funders.

Certainly not. We uphold the same high quality standards as for our regular subscription journals. All articles undergo either simple blind or double blind peer review and may be rejected. There are no charges if a manuscript gets rejected.

Nowadays, APCs are often factored into research grant budgets and hence the author is invoiced by the publishing house. Funding is also available from publication funds at universities and funding organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. Access to funding might be available via your department. If you wish to publish open access but your original grant did not include provision for APCs, please get in touch with your funding body or your university. For a list of funders and institutions which support a policy that recommends or might even require publishing open access, see: http://roarmap.eprints.org/ or http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/

APCs vary from journal to journal. Please check the author instructions on each journal homepage to find out how much it costs to have an article published open access.
APCs apply to accepted papers only; no fees are levied on rejected manuscripts.

Most of our open access articles are published under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. This means that you retain copyright and reuse-rights of your work. Your work can be shared, copied and redistributed in any medium or format under the condition that you as the author are given appropriate credit. A link to the license must be provided, and changes made have to be indicated. Nobody may use it commercially or alter it without your permission.

Retaining the copyright does require you to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement, allowing us to legally become the publisher and user of your copyright.

Three of our journals use the CC BY license as default. This means you retain copyright and reuse-rights of your work. Your work can be shared, copied and redistributed in any medium or format under the condition that you as the author are given appropriate credit. Everybody may use, adapt, remix, transform and build upon your work for any purpose, even commercially.  

To learn more about this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org. Please also note that Thieme is a SHERPA/RoMEO blue publisher that allows posting of the final publisher's PDF on your personal website.

Most of our journals are indexed in renowned scientific indexing services or directories, such as PubMed Central or Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). As soon as a new open access journal is launched, the process for including it in relevant indexing services is started. 

The open access model allows fast publication of your paper. As soon as it is reviewed and accepted, it can be published online and will be available for all to read and download from Thieme E-Journals.

You can submit your work online, using our manuscript submission websites. Please refer to the author instructions of the respective journals for details.

Usually not. As open access publications, all articles are made freely available for all to read and download from Thieme E-Journals. For some of our journals, print issues are published for promotional purposes.

Not automatically. Authors are sent a PDF of the finished article. Reprints may be ordered at: openthieme@thieme.de 
Librarians: A printed edition of all our open access journals can be ordered from openthieme@thieme.de.

All our journals are peer-reviewed. In general our Open Access journals practice double-blind peer review, however, a small number do implement a single-blind peer review model. For journal specific information on the process please consult the respective instructions for authors.

Thieme requires all authors to adhere to the universally accepted, high ethical standards of our profession. Concerns about plagiarism, double publication or scientific misconduct will be investigated. These issues are described in more detail on the website of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICME): www.icmje.org

This is a plagiarism detection software (www.crossref.org/crosscheck) and all our editors are given access to the system to check for potential plagiarism issues in submitted manuscripts.

Your question was not answered here? Please contact openthieme@thieme.de and we will respond as quickly as we can.