Open Access Policy of Journal of Tropical Oceanography

1 General Provisions

1.1 From the date of online publication, all full-text articles in this journal are permanently free to readers worldwide, with no subscription fees, per-article reading charges, or download fees, meeting the BOAI definition of open access and DOAJ inclusion criteria.

1.2 All formally published papers in this journal are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, which is a preferred open-access licensing model recognized by DOAJ.

1.3 This policy applies to authors, readers, research institutions, database platforms, and reprinting organizations, and is published in a designated section of the journal's official website as a statutory supporting document for DOAJ application.

2 Reader Access Rights

Any individual, research institution, library, or database platform may permanently and freely use the content without prior authorization from the editorial office or authors, provided they comply with the CC BY 4.0 license.

(1) Read, browse online, download full text, print, and copy the entire paper;

(2) Republish, distribute, or provide network links to the full text of the paper;

(3) Translation, adaptation, compilation, and derivative works based on secondary creation;

(4) Legal reuse of paper content in commercial/non-commercial scenarios;

Unique constraint: Any reuse must fully credit the original author, paper title, source journal "Journal of Tropical Oceanography," publication year, volume, issue, and page numbers / DOI.

3 Author Rights and Publishing Agreement

 3.1 Copyright Ownership: The original copyright (moral rights: right of attribution, right of modification, and right to integrity) of the paper permanently belongs to the author. By signing the "Copyright Transfer/Publication Authorization Agreement," the author grants the journal a perpetual global right to publish, distribute, and digitally store the work, in compliance with CC BY 4.0 and DOAJ copyright policies.

 3.2 Authors are deemed to be aware of the journal's open access (OA) policy upon submission. Once a paper is accepted and published, it will automatically be made available under the CC BY 4.0 license. Authors may not unilaterally withdraw the open access authorization.

  3.3 Authors may freely store and share the full text of their published papers on personal websites, institutional repositories, or preprint platforms without requiring approval from the journal.

4 Transparent Publication Fee (APC) Policy

This journal adopts an author-pays publication (APC) model, charging article processing fees upon acceptance of manuscripts. APC fee standards are publicly displayed in the official submission guidelines, ensuring transparency and openness in pricing.

5 Long-Term Digital Archiving Policy

5.1 This journal has permanently archived its published papers in the Institutional Knowledge Repository of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Social Sciences Literature Center, and the Science Press Digital Resource Library; simultaneously, metadata and full-text archives have been synchronized with databases such as DOAJ, CNKI, and Wanfang.

5.2 In the event of a journal's discontinuation or rebranding, previously published articles will remain permanently open access, and the archiving institution will continue to ensure free access to full texts.

6 Policy Effective Date

This OA policy will take effect officially on January 1, 2024, and previously published papers will be retroactively subject to this policy for open access.