Open Access

Open access (OA) status is provided across the Web of Science platform as a result of a partnership with Impactstory, a not-for-profit organization that developed a knowledge base of OA content. It makes it possible to discover and link to legal Gold or Bronze (free content at a publisher's website) and Green (e.g., author self-archived in a repository) OA versions. This partnership improves how users discover and access article-level OA versions by adding more links to OA content, and prioritizing links to the best OA content versions when multiple versions exist. Learn more about OA on Web of Science.

Consult the copyright owner for any reuse or licensing requests, regardless of the access type.

The following table outlines descriptions of each access type.

Open Access Type	Descriptions
Gold	DOAJ	Articles published in journals listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). All articles in these journals must have a license in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative to be listed on the DOAJ. Consult DOAJ for their specific definitions.
Gold	Other	Identified as having a Creative Commons (CC) license by Impactstory’s Unpaywall database but are not in journals listed on the DOAJ. Most of these articles are from hybrid journals. Other Gold as an indicator of hybrid gold open access articles is at varying levels of completeness, especially for newly published articles.
Bronze	The licensing for these articles is either unclear or identified by Impactstory’s Unpaywall database as non-CC license articles. These are free-to-read or public access articles located on a publisher’s site. A publisher may, as a promotion, grant free access to an article for a limited time. At the end of the promotional period, access to the article may require a fee which can lead to temporary errors in our data. You may find content that is incomplete, especially new content.
Green	Published	Final published versions of articles hosted on an institutional or subject-based repository (e.g., an article out of its embargo period posted to PubMed Central).
Green	Accepted	Accepted manuscripts hosted on a repository. Content is peer reviewed and final, but may not have been through the publisher’s copy-editing or typesetting.