OA publishing (coined as a term) in 2002, with the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Open-access journals are free to read and do not require the transfer of an author’s copyright, so researchers retain their intellectual property.
While the majority of OA journals worldwide do not charge to publish the US market overwhelmingly has adopted the APC or APF- article processing charges or fee model to replace subscription income despite the elimination of most print journals.
In the US, federal government agencies have mandates for researchers receiving funding to make their findings available to the public.
An open-access mandate is a policy adopted by a research institution, research funder
or government that requires or recommends researchers—usually university faculty or research staff and/or research grant recipients—to make their published, peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers open-access by self-archiving their final, peer-reviewed drafts in a freely accessible institutional repository or disciplinary repository ("Green OA") or by publishing them in an open-access journal (Gold OA). (borrowed from Wikipedia OA mandate).
ANY scientific publication that receives federal funding needs to be openly accessible on the day it's published.
Agencies are updating their public access policies to make publications and research funded by taxpayers publicly accessible, without an embargo or cost, as directed by the August 2022 OSTP memo.
Currently, agency policies vary, make sure to read the appropriate one in detail. A few things to consider:
