Open Access Journal: What CC BY 4.0 Means for Authors and Readers

An open access journal makes its articles free to read, download and redistribute, without a subscription or paywall. That single sentence hides a lot of variation: open access comes in several routes, is governed by several different licences, and is funded in several different ways. Understanding which combination a journal uses tells you far more than the phrase "open access" on its own.

This page explains the models, the licences, and what authors actually keep and give up. IJVAST publishes all articles open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, so the practical consequences of that specific choice are described in detail.

The routes to open access

IJVAST operates a gold open access model with a single flat publication fee: Rs.1,200 for Indian authors including 18% GST, or $25 USD for international authors. There is no submission charge, no per-page charge, no colour-figure charge and no separate certificate charge.

• Gold open access: the final published version is free on the journal's own site, usually funded by an article processing charge paid by the author or their institution.
• Green open access: the journal itself may be subscription-based, but authors may deposit a version in an institutional or subject repository, often after an embargo.
• Diamond or platinum open access: free to read and free to publish, funded by a society, university or grant rather than by authors.
• Hybrid: a subscription journal where individual articles can be made open on payment of an additional fee — widely criticised for double-charging.

What CC BY 4.0 actually permits

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International is the most permissive of the standard scholarly licences. Under CC BY 4.0 anyone may copy and redistribute the article in any medium or format, and may remix, transform and build upon it for any purpose, including commercially — provided they give appropriate credit, link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.

For an author, the important consequence is that you keep copyright. You are licensing readers to reuse the work, not transferring ownership to the publisher. You remain free to post the paper on your own site, deposit it in your institution's repository, include it in your thesis, and reuse your own figures in later work without asking permission.

The trade-off is that you cannot later restrict reuse. Once published under CC BY 4.0, the article can be translated, included in an anthology, or used in commercial training materials, as long as you are credited. For the overwhelming majority of academic work this is exactly what authors want: maximum circulation with guaranteed attribution.

Why open access matters for visibility

A paywalled paper is invisible to anyone whose institution has not bought the subscription — which includes most students in most of the world, most independent researchers, most practitioners in industry, and most policy readers. An open article can be read by all of them, and can be crawled and surfaced by general and scholarly search engines.

Practical reach is also a career issue for early-career authors. A recruiter, an admissions committee or a scholarship panel will follow a link and read the paper. They will not create a library account to do it.

Distinguishing genuine open access from predatory publishing

IJVAST is published by SkyInnovate Technologies. Its ISSN application and Crossref DOI membership application are both in progress; until those are granted the journal states this openly rather than displaying a number it does not yet hold. Stating that plainly is itself one of the checks above: a journal that would display a fabricated ISSN is a journal that would fabricate other things.

• The journal states its fee clearly before submission and does not add charges after acceptance.
• Peer review is described concretely, and rejection is a real outcome.
• The licence is named explicitly (for example CC BY 4.0), not merely described as "free to read".
• The editorial board lists real, verifiable people with institutional affiliations.
• Claims about identifiers and indexing match reality, including saying "application in progress" where that is the truth.
• Contact details are real and answered, with a stated postal location and working email.
• There is no spam promising acceptance within days of an unsolicited invitation.

Author rights checklist under IJVAST's open access policy

• You retain copyright in your article.
• You may share the published version anywhere, including ResearchGate, your own site and your institutional repository.
• You may reuse your own figures, tables and text in your thesis and in later publications.
• Readers may redistribute and adapt the work with attribution to you.
• The article page and PDF remain freely accessible at a permanent URL, with no registration wall.

Funding, fees and what the charge covers

Open access has to be paid for by someone. In a gold model the cost of editorial handling, similarity screening, reviewer coordination, publication infrastructure and permanent hosting is covered by the publication fee rather than by readers. The question worth asking is not whether a journal charges, but whether the charge is proportionate, transparent and stated in advance.

IJVAST's flat Rs.1,200 (inclusive of 18% GST) for Indian authors, or $25 USD for international authors, covers editorial handling, peer review coordination, publication of the open-access record, permanent hosting, and the certificate of publication. The fee is payable after acceptance, not at submission.

Frequently asked questions