Open Access Policy

The International Journal of Psychology and Strategic Communication (IJPSC) is a fully open-access scholarly journal. All peer-reviewed scholarly articles published by IJPSC are made freely and permanently available online immediately upon publication.

Access to published peer-reviewed scholarly articles does not require payment, subscription, institutional access, registration, or the creation of a user account.

1. Open Access Statement

IJPSC provides immediate open access to all peer-reviewed scholarly articles. There is no embargo period.

Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, crawl, index, and otherwise lawfully reuse the full texts of published peer-reviewed scholarly articles in accordance with the applicable Creative Commons license.

Published peer-reviewed scholarly articles may also be processed by software, search engines, indexing services, repositories, research infrastructures, and other automated systems for lawful scholarly, educational, computational, and other purposes permitted under the applicable license.

2. Creative Commons License

All peer-reviewed scholarly articles published by IJPSC are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Under CC BY 4.0, users may share, copy, redistribute, adapt, transform, and build upon published material for any lawful purpose, including commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author or authors, a link to the license is provided, and any changes made to the original material are indicated.

The full terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License are available at:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

IJPSC does not impose additional restrictions that limit or contradict the rights granted under CC BY 4.0.

3. Copyright

Authors retain copyright and full publishing rights in their published articles without restriction.

Copyright is not transferred or assigned to IJPSC.

Authors grant IJPSC a non-exclusive right of first publication and the non-exclusive rights necessary to publish, distribute, preserve, identify, and make the article available as the journal’s version of record.

IJPSC does not require authors to transfer exclusive publishing rights, commercial rights, or copyright ownership to the journal.

The copyright terms applicable to published articles are separate from copyright relating to the IJPSC website, journal design, logos, trademarks, software, and other material that is not part of a peer-reviewed scholarly article.

4. Authors’ Rights

Authors retain the right to use, reproduce, distribute, share, archive, translate, adapt, and otherwise reuse their published articles in accordance with CC BY 4.0.

Authors may, without requesting additional permission from IJPSC:

• deposit the published version of record in institutional or disciplinary repositories;
• make the published article available on personal or institutional websites;
• share the article through academic and professional networks;
• use the article for teaching, presentations, and educational purposes;
• reuse parts or all of the article in subsequent scholarly works, subject to appropriate citation;
• distribute copies of the published article; and
• otherwise exercise their rights as copyright holders.

When the published version is redistributed or reused, appropriate attribution to the author or authors and citation of the original IJPSC publication, including the DOI where available, must be provided in accordance with CC BY 4.0.

5. Self-Archiving and Repository Deposit

IJPSC permits immediate self-archiving of published articles.

Authors may deposit and publicly distribute the published version of record immediately after publication. No embargo period applies.

Published articles may be deposited in:

• institutional repositories;
• disciplinary and subject repositories;
• research information systems;
• institutional websites;
• personal academic websites; and
• academic networking and scholarly communication platforms.

Authors do not require additional permission from IJPSC to archive or distribute the published version of record in accordance with CC BY 4.0.

6. Immediate Access and No Embargo

All peer-reviewed scholarly articles are openly accessible immediately upon publication.

IJPSC does not apply an embargo period.

The full text of each published peer-reviewed scholarly article is accessible without subscription, payment, registration, institutional authentication, or any other access barrier.

7. Article Processing Charges and Author Fees

8. Funding of the Journal

IJPSC is supported by the Anneliese and Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Waldemar Wittmann Foundation in furtherance of its commitment to science, research, and education.

The journal’s funding model enables IJPSC to publish without charging authors submission fees, article processing charges, or other publication fees.

Funding arrangements do not influence editorial assessment, reviewer selection, peer review, acceptance, rejection, or any other editorial decision.

9. Third-Party Material

The CC BY 4.0 license applies to the peer-reviewed scholarly article except where individual third-party material is clearly identified as being subject to different copyright or licensing terms.

Third-party material reproduced under permission, another license, or another lawful basis must be clearly identified within the article. Where required, the relevant copyright holder, license, permission, or other applicable rights information must be stated.

Users wishing to reuse third-party material that is not covered by the article’s CC BY 4.0 license are responsible for obtaining any additional permission required from the relevant rights holder.

10. Licensing Information in Published Articles

The applicable Creative Commons license is clearly displayed in published peer-reviewed scholarly articles and on the corresponding article pages.

Published articles identify the applicable license as CC BY 4.0 and provide a link to the license terms.

Licensing information forms part of the publication record and is intended to make the permitted conditions of access, sharing, adaptation, and reuse immediately clear to readers and users.

11. Persistent Identification and Metadata

Published peer-reviewed scholarly articles are assigned persistent bibliographic identifiers, including Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).

Bibliographic metadata associated with published articles includes relevant information concerning the article, authorship, journal, publication details, DOI, and applicable open-access license.

IJPSC makes bibliographic metadata available to relevant scholarly infrastructures and discovery services in order to facilitate identification, linking, indexing, citation, and scholarly discovery.

12. Machine Readability, Indexing and Computational Reuse

IJPSC supports the discovery, indexing, linking, crawling, and machine processing of published peer-reviewed scholarly articles.

The CC BY 4.0 license permits lawful text and data processing, computational analysis, indexing, machine learning, and other automated uses of published articles, subject to the attribution requirements of the license and applicable law.

IJPSC does not impose contractual restrictions that prevent lawful machine access or reuse permitted under CC BY 4.0.

13. Open Access and Editorial Independence

The open-access publication model of IJPSC is independent of the journal’s editorial and peer-review decisions.

Editorial decisions are based on scholarly quality, relevance to the journal’s aims and scope, methodological or conceptual soundness, research integrity, ethical compliance, and the results of the journal’s editorial assessment and peer-review procedures.

The absence of author fees does not affect editorial assessment, reviewer selection, peer review, acceptance, or rejection.

14. Open Access and the Version of Record

The final published version of an article on the IJPSC website constitutes the journal’s version of record.

The version of record remains openly accessible and may be shared, archived, and reused in accordance with CC BY 4.0.

Substantive post-publication changes to the version of record are documented transparently through the journal’s corrections, retractions, and post-publication procedures.

15. Digital Preservation

IJPSC recognises the importance of ensuring the long-term availability and integrity of published peer-reviewed scholarly articles.

The journal’s arrangements for long-term digital preservation, archival continuity, and access to published articles in the event that the journal ceases publication are described separately in the journal’s Archiving & Digital Preservation Policy.

Digital Object Identifier registration and bibliographic metadata services are used for persistent identification and discovery but are not presented as substitutes for long-term preservation of the published full text.

16. Commitment to Open Scholarly Communication

IJPSC supports open scholarly communication by removing financial and technical barriers to accessing peer-reviewed research and by providing clearly defined rights for lawful reuse.

The journal is committed to making published peer-reviewed scholarly articles openly available, discoverable, shareable, reusable, and accessible to researchers, practitioners, institutions, policymakers, students, and the wider public.