This journal is a fully open access journal, which means all 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.

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

Gold Open Access publication in this journal is supported by various funding routes to ensure that every author, irrespective of their circumstances, can enjoy the benefits of Gold OA. Prospective authors should submit with full confidence, knowing that no author will face a financial barrier to publication. The costs of publishing 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.

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.