FREE TO read & PUBLISH
Open science.
Since its conception in 2018, the Mass Timber Construction Journal has been publishing under an open-access model. This means that all articles published in the MTCJ, including data, graphics, and supplements, can be linked from external sources free of charge under the sole condition of proper accreditation of the source and original publisher. We believe that open access publishing fosters the exchange of research results and facilitates interdisciplinary research, ultimately boosting scientific advancements.
Open-access
What is open-access?
In a nutshell: open-access means free access to scholarly literature.
Open-access allows any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of an article, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The most commonly invoked definition of open access comes from the so-called Budapest Declaration (2002).
What is the MTCJ open-access model?
There are two basic strategies for implementing open-access: green and gold. Gold-open access refers to the publication of scholarly works as articles in open access journals, typically with article processing charges (APC) at the authors expense associated. Green open access – also known as self-archiving – refers to making preprints or post-prints of works published with a publisher or in a journal available to the public by depositing them in a repository.
The Mass Timber Construction Journal adopted the diamond open-access publishing model, which combines the best of gold and green open-access. Simply put, this means that all articles submitted to the MTCJ are subjected to a rigorous process of peer-review (gold OA), while no fees are charged to authors nor readers (green OA), which is well in line with the MTCJ philosophy of open science.
Benefits to the author
High Visibility and Availability: open-access publishing allow everyone to freely access and download the full text of articles published by the MTCJ. This means that readers (mostly other researchers) do not need to pay any subscription or pay-per-view charges to read articles published by MTCJ.
Higher Citation Impact: open-access articles have higher visibility and citation rates, as those are more likely to be included in search engines and indexing databases.
No Publishing Costs: contrarily to many publishers, the MTCJ do not charge the authors or the readers for handling and producing an article, commonly referred to as article processing charge (APC).
Faster Publication: MTCJ’s open access articles get online-only availability. Accepted articles are typically published faster than those of traditional, subscription-based and printed journals.
Licensing
Creative Commons licensing
In addition to toll-free access to scholarly findings, the second key component of open-access is their widest possible reuse. By granting usage licenses, authors specify the rights that third parties have when using their research findings. By default, MTCJ publishes all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0), as it grants everyone a free, worldwide right of access to the publication as well as the right to reuse it, for example, by copying, distributing, transmitting, publicly displaying, or adapting it.
CC BY-NC articles allow the author, and any non-commercial bodies, to reuse the material for non-commercial uses in any other way they choose, subject to being in accordance with the CC-BY-NC license, without acquiring permission from the MTCJ. Any reuse must give attribution to the author(s) and the journal.
CC BY-NC articles can be identified by the following statement and image that appears at the end of the article:
“
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0)”
Copyrights
For articles published open access, the authors license exclusive rights in their article to the MTCJ through a copyright transfer agreement (CTA).
The author (on behalf of any and all co-authors) assigns to MTCJ the copyright to the article; whereby the MTCJ shall have the exclusive international rights to publish in any and all media the said article and translations of it wholly or in part throughout the World under the provisions on the CTA. These rights include without limitation mechanical, electronic and visual reproduction; electronic storage and retrieval; and all other forms of electronic publication or any other types of publication including all subsidiary rights.You can find our terms and conditions for publication.
Retained rights of authors
Authors retain all proprietary rights in any idea, process, procedure, or articles of manufacture described in the published article, including the right to seek patent protection for them. Authors may perform, lecture, teach, conduct related research, display all or part of the Paper, and create derivative works in print or electronic format. Authors may reproduce and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes only. For all copies of the article made by authors, they must acknowledge the MTCJ as original publisher and include the names of all author(s), the publication title, and an appropriate copyright notice that identifies the MTC as the copyright holder.