This journal is an open access journal in which all research articles are published as Gold Open Access under a Creative Commons licence. This enables anyone to access and redistribute the content and, depending upon the licence, re-use the content in new or derivative works with attribution. The terms of re-use for Gold Open Access content are stated in the copyright line of the article. Non-research material is not, by default, published Gold Open Access. 

Research articles typically include original articles, review articles, brief communications, case reports, and other such publications. Non-research articles typically include book reviews, editorials, letters, article commentaries, and other such publications. If you have questions about what article types are considered research, please check the author instructions.

The Creative Commons licences offered by this journal for Gold Open Access articles are CC BY, CC BY-NC-SA, and CC BY-NC-ND.

Open access funding

This journal provides different funding routes depending on whether you are publishing a research article or non-research article. Please check the author instructions page to confirm whether your article type is considered a research article. 

Research articles

Gold Open Access publication of research articles in this journal is supported by various funding routes to ensure that every author, irrespective of their circumstances, can publish their research Gold OA. Prospective authors should submit with full confidence, knowing that no author will face a financial barrier to publication. The costs of publishing a research article Gold OA may be covered in one of the following ways: 

• For corresponding authors at institutions that have an open access publishing agreement with Cambridge, in the majority of cases these cover the full costs of Gold OA. Eligibility is automatically established during the publication process. Prospective authors can use our eligibility checker to see if their institution has an active agreement.
• The Cambridge Open Equity Initiative (COEI) funds Gold OA for corresponding authors from over 100 low- and middle-income countries. Eligibility is automatically established during the publication process.
• Corresponding authors from low- and middle-income countries who are not covered by an institutional open access agreement or the Cambridge Open Equity Initiative may be eligible for support under the Research4Life scheme. 
• If authors have third-party funding available for the payment of article processing charges (APCs), for example as part of a research grant, they are asked to use this funding to pay an APC.
• Any corresponding author of a research article who is not covered by one of the above funding routes can request a discount or full waiver of their APC. Authors will be invited to make their request after editorial acceptance of their article, when completing their Author Information Form.

Please note that the decision whether to accept a paper for publication will rest solely with the Editor, and without reference to the funding situation of the authors. The Editor, editorial board members, and reviewers have no involvement with funding support for Gold OA and cannot grant APC discounts or waivers, which shall be assessed and provided by Cambridge.  

Please check the fees and pricing page for details of this journal’s charges, and our central APC page for further information such as APC refund policies.

Non-research articles

By default non-research articles in this journal are not published Gold Open Access, so costs of Gold OA publishing are not applicable. You may choose to publish a non-research article as Gold Open Access, but non-research articles published this way will require an APC to cover the costs of Gold OA publishing, and will not be eligible for coverage by institutional agreements, COEI, or other waivers or discounts. 

Other routes to open access

Under this journal’s Green Open Access policy, authors can make pre-published versions of their articles available in institutional or other repositories, or on their personal or departmental websites, under certain conditions. This allows authors to comply with the open access mandates of many funders and institutions before the final article is published as Gold Open Access. For more information, please see Cambridge University Press’s Green Open Access policy page, where you can download a spreadsheet with full details about which versions of articles authors can post online, and where and when authors can post them.

If you have open access questions which are not answered by our policy pages and resources, please contact [email protected].

Social Sharing

This journal participates in Cambridge Core Share, an initiative that allows a read-only version of a final published PDF (the Version of Record) to be shared and easily accessed by anyone. Core Share links, and Core Share PDFs containing the links, can be freely shared on social media sites and scholarly collaboration networks to enhance both the impact and discoverability of research. 

Preprint policy

A preprint is an early version of an article prior to the version accepted for publication in a journal. This journal allows preprints to be posted anywhere at any time, including before submission to the journal. For more information, see the Cambridge University Press preprint policy.