1. Purpose and Scope
AMG Transcend Association supports immediate and unrestricted access to scholarly research and maintains an open-access publishing model across its journal portfolio.
This policy establishes publisher-level principles concerning open access, publication charges, copyright ownership, licensing, reuse, author rights, third-party material, repository deposit, and transparency of licensing information.
Individual journals may provide additional instructions consistent with these principles.
2. Open Access Model
Journals published by AMG Transcend Association operate under a Platinum/Diamond Open Access model.
Published scholarly articles are made freely and permanently accessible online without subscription barriers or reader registration requirements.
Access to the published Version of Record is provided immediately upon publication without an embargo period.
Open access applies to reading and access, while the rights governing copying, redistribution, adaptation, and other reuse are determined by the license attached to the published work.
3. Publication Charges
At the date of publication of this policy, AMG Transcend Association journals do not charge authors Article Processing Charges (APCs), submission fees, acceptance fees, publication fees, or mandatory charges as a condition of publication.
Authors are not required to make a payment in order for a manuscript to receive editorial consideration or to be published following acceptance.
Editorial and peer-review decisions must remain independent of financial considerations.
If a journal introduces any publication-related charge in the future, the nature and amount of the charge, applicable exemptions or waivers, and the stage at which it applies must be disclosed clearly to authors before submission.
No fee may be introduced retrospectively for a manuscript on terms that were not disclosed when the manuscript entered the editorial process.
4. Immediate and Permanent Access
Published articles must remain openly accessible from the journal website without subscription or paywall restrictions.
AMG Transcend Association does not impose an access embargo on newly published scholarly articles.
The open-access status of an article must not be withdrawn after publication merely for commercial, financial, institutional, or reputational reasons.
Post-publication corrections, retractions, or other editorial actions may change the status or presentation of an article but must be implemented in accordance with the journal’s policies concerning the integrity of the scholarly record.
5. Copyright Ownership
Authors retain copyright in their scholarly articles.
Publication in an AMG Transcend Association journal does not require authors to transfer ownership of copyright to the publisher solely as a condition of publication.
Authors remain the copyright holders of their original work, subject to any rights held by employers, institutions, funders, collaborators, or other parties under applicable law or prior agreements.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that they have sufficient rights to authorize publication and licensing of the material they submit.
6. License Granted for Publication
By agreeing to publication, authors authorize the relevant journal and AMG Transcend Association, on a non-exclusive basis, to publish, reproduce, distribute, communicate, archive, preserve, index, display, and otherwise make the article available in accordance with the applicable open-access license.
This authorization allows the publisher to maintain and disseminate the Version of Record, distribute article metadata, deposit content with appropriate indexing, repository, preservation, or archiving services, and undertake legitimate technical actions necessary for scholarly publishing and preservation.
Because the authorization is non-exclusive, authors retain the rights permitted to them as copyright holders and under the applicable Creative Commons license.
7. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Scholarly articles published by AMG Transcend Association journals are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, unless a clearly identified item contains third-party material subject to different rights.
Under CC BY 4.0, users may, subject to the terms of the license:
- copy and redistribute the licensed material in any medium or format;
- share and disseminate the material;
- adapt, remix, transform, or build upon the material; and
- use the material for lawful purposes, including commercial purposes.
These permissions apply provided that the requirements of the license are respected.
The canonical license terms are maintained by Creative Commons.
8. Attribution Requirements
Reuse of material licensed under CC BY 4.0 must provide appropriate attribution.
As applicable, users must:
- identify the original author or authors and source;
- retain relevant copyright and license information;
- provide a reference or link to the CC BY 4.0 license;
- indicate whether changes were made; and
- avoid implying endorsement by the authors, journal, or publisher where no such endorsement exists.
Attribution must be provided in a manner appropriate to the medium and context of reuse.
The open-access license permits reuse; it does not permit misleading attribution, false authorship, or misrepresentation of an adapted work as the unchanged original.
9. Adaptations, Translations, and Reuse
CC BY 4.0 permits adaptations, translations, derivative works, and other forms of reuse subject to the license terms.
Users creating an adapted or translated version must distinguish their modifications from the original publication and must not present the modified version as an official journal version unless it has been formally published by the journal.
AMG Transcend Association does not require prior permission for uses already authorized by the applicable Creative Commons license.
Reuse that falls outside the applicable license or involves material excluded from the license may require separate permission from the relevant rights holder.
10. Third-Party Material
A Creative Commons license can apply only to material for which the licensor has authority to grant the relevant rights.
Articles may contain figures, photographs, illustrations, datasets, maps, instruments, questionnaires, scales, excerpts, or other material owned by third parties.
Authors must ensure that such material is:
- used under a compatible open license;
- in the public domain;
- used under an applicable statutory exception or limitation; or
- reproduced with appropriate permission from the rights holder.
Where third-party material is not covered by the article’s CC BY 4.0 license, this must be indicated clearly where reasonably practicable.
Users wishing to reuse such excluded material are responsible for determining whether additional permission is required.
The open-access license applying to an article must not be interpreted as granting rights that the authors or publisher do not possess.
11. Author Responsibilities Concerning Copyright
Authors must ensure that submission and publication of their manuscript do not knowingly infringe the copyright, licensing, confidentiality, privacy, or other legitimate rights of third parties.
Authors are responsible for:
- identifying material reproduced or adapted from other sources;
- providing appropriate attribution;
- obtaining required permissions before publication;
- complying with the conditions attached to reused material;
- accurately identifying the source and licensing status of third-party content; and
- informing the journal of any material-specific restrictions that affect publication or reuse.
Permission documentation may be requested during editorial or production assessment where necessary.
12. Author Reuse and Self-Archiving
Authors may share, distribute, deposit, and reuse their published articles in accordance with the CC BY 4.0 license.
Authors may make the published article available through:
- institutional repositories;
- disciplinary repositories;
- personal or institutional websites;
- scholarly profiles or networks;
- teaching and educational materials; and
- other lawful dissemination channels.
AMG Transcend Association does not impose an embargo on author deposit of the openly published Version of Record.
Authors should provide appropriate citation and, where reasonably possible, link to the published Version of Record and its persistent identifier.
13. Repository, Indexing, and Preservation Deposit
AMG Transcend Association and its journals may provide article content and metadata to appropriate repositories, indexing services, bibliographic databases, research infrastructures, discovery systems, and digital-preservation services.
Such distribution may include the full text where permitted by the applicable license and technical arrangements.
Deposit or redistribution under these mechanisms must preserve appropriate authorship, citation, copyright, licensing, and publication-status information.
Specific claims concerning participation in preservation services must be made only where such participation has been established and verified.
14. Text and Data Mining and Machine Processing
Material published under CC BY 4.0 may be reused for text and data mining, computational analysis, machine processing, and other lawful purposes to the extent permitted by the license and applicable law.
Such reuse remains subject to appropriate attribution and other applicable CC BY 4.0 conditions.
The license does not remove obligations arising from rights or restrictions that are outside the scope of copyright licensing, including privacy, confidentiality, data protection, contractual restrictions, patent rights, or rights applicable to third-party material.
15. License Information and Article-Level Transparency
Each published article must contain or be associated with clear copyright and licensing information sufficient for readers and reuse services to determine its status.
Where applicable, article-level information should identify:
- the copyright holder;
- the applicable Creative Commons license;
- the version of the license;
- a reference or link to the license; and
- any material-specific exception or restriction that materially affects reuse.
Copyright and license information should also be represented consistently in article metadata where technically supported.
The journal website, article PDF or other Version of Record, and relevant metadata should not contain contradictory statements concerning copyright or reuse rights.
16. Irrevocability of Published Creative Commons Licenses
Once a work has been validly published under CC BY 4.0, the permissions already granted under that license are not ordinarily withdrawn from compliant users.
Subsequent withdrawal of an article from active display, correction, retraction, change in journal ownership, change in publisher policy, or discontinuation of a journal does not retrospectively convert previously licensed content into conventionally restricted content.
Retraction affects the scholarly status and reliability of an article, not the historical fact that the work was published under the stated license.
Retracted or corrected content must therefore remain clearly identified in accordance with the Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern policy.
17. Funder and Institutional Requirements
Authors are responsible for determining whether their funder, employer, institution, research contract, or other applicable arrangement imposes additional open-access, licensing, repository, or rights-retention requirements.
AMG Transcend Association journals should provide sufficiently clear copyright and licensing information to allow authors to assess compatibility with such requirements.
Where a legitimate funder or institutional requirement is compatible with the journal’s publication model, authors may comply with that requirement without surrendering rights otherwise retained under this policy.
18. Changes to the Publisher’s Open-Access Model
Any material future change affecting publication charges, author copyright, the default open-access license, access conditions, or reuse rights must be communicated transparently.
Such changes must not be applied retrospectively in a manner that removes rights already granted under the license attached to previously published articles.
Historical articles remain governed by the copyright and license terms applicable to them at the time of publication, unless the relevant rights holders validly authorize additional rights.
19. Relationship with Other Policies
This policy should be read together with applicable AMG Transcend Association and journal policies concerning:
- Editorial Independence and Governance;
- Advertising, Sponsorship and Commercial Activities;
- Authorship and Contributor Responsibilities;
- Publication Ethics and Research Integrity;
- Data Integrity and Reproducibility;
- AI and Generative Tools;
- Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern; and
- Archiving and Digital Preservation.
Individual journals may provide additional copyright, licensing, repository, or author guidance consistent with this policy.