Open Access Policy and Copyriht

Open Access, Copyright and Licensing Policy – RPGE

(Full Compliance with DOAJ – 2025)**

The RPGE – Online Journal of Policy and Educational Management adopts immediate Open Access for all published content. This means that any user may access, read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, index and link to the full texts of articles without access barriers, without embargo, and without registration, in full alignment with the DOAJ definition of Open Access.

All academic content is available permanently and free of charge.

1. License and Usage Rights

All academic content published by RPGE is licensed under:

Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Under this license, users may:

  • copy, redistribute and print the material;

  • adapt, remix, transform and build upon the content;

  • reuse the material for non-commercial purposes;

provided that they:

  1. give appropriate credit to the author(s) and to RPGE;

  2. do not use the content for commercial purposes;

  3. distribute derivative works under the same license.

RPGE does not modify, restrict, or add terms to the Creative Commons license, as required by DOAJ.

2. Copyright – DOAJ Compliance

In full accordance with DOAJ recommendations:

2.1 Copyright ownership

  • Authors retain full copyright of their articles.

  • RPGE does not require copyright transfer.

  • RPGE does not request exclusive rights.

  • Authors retain all moral and economic rights and may reuse their work freely.

2.2 Rights granted to RPGE

By submitting a manuscript, authors grant RPGE a non-exclusive license to:

  • publish the article for the first time;

  • distribute, preserve and index the content;

  • deposit and share metadata;

  • maintain the article in digital preservation systems.

No exclusive or commercial rights are transferred to the journal.

2.3 Relationship between copyright and CC license

Following DOAJ criteria:

  • the CC license applies to readers and users,

  • and does not restrict authors, who remain copyright holders;

  • permissions granted to RPGE are based on the non-exclusive publishing license.

2.4 Prohibited practices

RPGE does not:

  • demand exclusive rights;

  • demand commercial rights;

  • require full or partial copyright transfer;

  • add restrictions beyond the CC license;

  • use “All rights reserved”;

  • rely on “fair use” as a default access model.

3. Self-Archiving (Open Self-Deposit)

Authors are allowed to deposit:

  • preprints,

  • postprints (accepted version),

  • the published PDF (version of record),

in institutional, thematic or personal repositories at any time, without embargo, provided the final RPGE version is cited with its DOI.

4. Non-Open Access Content (Allowed Exceptions – DOAJ 2025)

RPGE may include small pieces of third-party copyrighted content (e.g., images, figures, excerpts), only when legally permitted, and must:

  • clearly identify the non-OA material;

  • credit the copyright holder;

  • indicate the specific license or “all rights reserved”;

  • include the justification (permission or legal exception).

Such content cannot be academic articles.

5. Business Model (APC)

RPGE is not a Diamond Open Access journal.

The journal operates under an Open Access model with Article Processing Charges (APC) to support:

  • editorial management;

  • peer review;

  • text editing and normalization;

  • typesetting and production;

  • digital infrastructure;

  • indexing and preservation.

Access to all published content remains fully free for readers.

6. DOAJ Full Compliance Statement

RPGE fulfills all DOAJ basic criteria:

  • immediate and permanent Open Access;

  • no embargo;

  • no registration required for reading;

  • clear Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0);

  • authors retain full copyright;

  • transparency in rights, licensing and costs;

  • no hybrid model;

  • explicit identification of any non-OA material;

  • complete machine-readable metadata of rights;

  • self-archiving allowed without restrictions;

  • adherence to ethical and editorial integrity standards.