From January 2023 this journal is a wholly open access journal, which means all articles published from this point 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. Authors may choose any of the six Creative Commons licences when publishing in this journal. The terms of re-use for Gold Open Access content are stated in the copyright line of the article.

Gold Open Access is supported by an article processing charge (APC) typically paid by the author’s funding body or institution; please check the fees and pricing page for details of this journal's charges. Cambridge University Press has also made a number of agreements to support open access, and authors at low- and middle-income countries, or from participating institutions, may be eligible for APC waivers and discounts.

This journal will also waive the APC for all authors who do not have funds available to pay an APC and are not otherwise eligible for an APC waiver or discount. When authors submit to the journal they are asked to provide details about their funding and to confirm whether or not an APC discount or waiver is required.

Under this journal’s Green Open Access policy, authors can also 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 openresearch@cambridge.org.

Important notice: This journal will waive the Gold OA fee for all authors who do not have funds available to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) and are not otherwise eligible for an APC waiver or discount. When authors submit to the journal they are asked to provide details about their funding and to complete an application form if an APC waiver is required.

The archive and free availability of 2020, 2021 and 2022 content after 12 months

The CJLS/RCDS back archive remains behind a paywall but the final version of all CJLS/RCDS content published in 2020, 2021 and 2022 is freely available digitally twelve months after the original publication of the issue in which it appears.

Preprints

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.