"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 processing 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 processing 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.

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, your university, or double-check our funding agreements page. 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.

The final version of record of an Open Access paper may be deposited immediately in any repository according to the stipulation of the respective creative commons license.

Articles that are not published under a creative commons license (non-Open Access publications), the authors may make the Accepted Version of their manuscript, including Supplemental Data, available on a non-commercial academic Institutional Repository no earlier than 12 months after the article was first published.

The archived version must contain a reference/ link to the final version of record of the article. The file format of the archived version shall be the same as the file format of the article submitted by the author (usually .doc), or any other file format that has been generated from this version (e. g., PDF).

Authors will receive upon publication an electronic reprint of the final version of record article for personal use. This reprint may be forwarded to individual colleagues or be used on the author's homepage. This electronic reprint is not provided for use in Repositories, including social and scientific networks and platforms. Any further use shall be only permitted after prior written consent by Thieme.

Our Open Access articles are published immediately under a Creative Commons license.

To learn more about this license, please visit https://creativecommons.org. Please also note that Thieme 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 will be prepared for publication immediately and will be available for all to read and download from Thieme Connect.

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

All our journals are single blind or double blind peer-reviewed. We uphold the same high quality standards as for our regular subscription journals. For journal specific information on the process please consult the respective instructions for authors.

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