Open Access, Copyright, and Licensing

The International Journal of Medical Students (IJMS) provides immediate open access to its published content under a Diamond Open Access model. Authors do not pay to submit, review, process, or publish a manuscript, and readers do not pay to access published articles.

Authors retain copyright in their work. Upon acceptance, they grant the Journal and its publisher the rights necessary to publish, archive, preserve, distribute, and make the article accessible under the applicable Creative Commons license.

Contents

Diamond Open Access
Author and Reader Fees
Copyright Ownership
Rights Granted to the Journal and Publisher
Creative Commons License
Permitted Reuse
Attribution Requirements
Author Sharing and Repository Deposit
Preprints and Prior Online Posting
Sharing the Published Version
Third-Party and Protected Material
Author Representations and Responsibilities
Government and Funder Requirements
Preservation and Archiving
License and Publication-Agreement Changes
Related Policies and Resources

Diamond Open Access

The IJMS makes its published content freely available online immediately upon publication.

Diamond Open Access means that:

authors are not charged to submit or publish;
readers are not charged to access published content;
articles are available without a subscription;
published content may be read, downloaded, searched, linked, and reused under the applicable license;
access is not restricted according to institutional affiliation or geographic location; and
the Journal’s editorial decisions are independent of an author’s ability to pay.

Open access does not eliminate copyright, attribution, confidentiality, privacy, research-integrity, or third-party permission requirements.

Author and Reader Fees

Submission fee	None
Editorial-assessment fee	None
Article processing charge	None
Publication fee	None
Mandatory page or color charge	None
Reader subscription or access fee	None

No payment is required for a manuscript to receive editorial assessment, peer review, acceptance, or publication.

The Journal does not offer a paid pathway that guarantees expedited review, acceptance, preferential treatment, or publication.

External services used voluntarily by authors, such as professional editing, translation, statistical consultation, illustration, or printing, are independent of the Journal and do not influence editorial decisions.

Copyright Ownership

Authors retain copyright in the accepted and published work, including the text and associated digital materials to the extent that the authors own those materials.

Retaining copyright allows authors to:

be identified and credited as the creators of the work;
reuse their work according to the publication agreement and applicable license;
deposit or share permitted versions;
incorporate the work into later scholarly or educational materials;
authorize additional nonexclusive uses; and
protect the integrity and attribution of the work.

Authors cannot transfer rights that they do not own. Material created or owned by an employer, government, funder, institution, photographer, illustrator, publisher, or another third party may be subject to separate rights or restrictions.

Rights Granted to the Journal and Publisher

Upon acceptance, the authors grant the Journal and its publisher the right of first publication and a nonexclusive, continuing license to publish, reproduce, archive, preserve, distribute, display, index, and make the work accessible.

These rights allow the Journal and publisher to:

publish the article online and in journal issues or collections;
produce HTML, PDF, XML, metadata, and other publication formats;
assign and maintain a Digital Object Identifier;
submit article information to indexing, abstracting, discovery, and preservation services;
archive and preserve the scholarly record;
distribute the article under the applicable Creative Commons license;
publish corrections, retractions, or other notices when necessary; and
maintain access to the article over time.

The license granted to the Journal and publisher is nonexclusive. Authors may enter into additional nonexclusive arrangements for distribution or reuse when those arrangements acknowledge the article’s initial publication in the IJMS and do not conflict with rights previously granted.

Creative Commons License

New articles published by the IJMS are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, commonly identified as CC BY 4.0.

Subject to the terms of the license, CC BY 4.0 permits others to:

copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format;
share the article with students, colleagues, institutions, and the public;
include the material in repositories, databases, and educational resources;
translate, adapt, transform, or build upon the material;
use the material for commercial or noncommercial purposes; and
apply text- and data-mining or computational methods.

These permissions cannot be revoked for users who comply with the license terms.

The CC BY license applies only to material covered by the Journal’s license. A separate credit line may identify material that is excluded from the article’s Creative Commons license.

Review the CC BY 4.0 License

Permitted Reuse

Readers and other users may reuse licensed IJMS content without obtaining separate permission when they comply with the applicable Creative Commons license.

Permitted reuse may include:

reproducing an article or part of an article;
including figures or tables in another publication;
using content in teaching materials or presentations;
depositing the article in an institutional or subject repository;
translating the article;
adapting a diagram, table, or educational resource;
incorporating content into a systematic review or evidence synthesis;
using content in software, datasets, or computational research;
printing and distributing copies; and
using the material commercially.

Reuse must not imply that the authors, Journal, publisher, or affiliated institutions endorse the reuse, adaptation, organization, product, or conclusions.

Users remain responsible for complying with privacy, confidentiality, publicity, trademark, moral-rights, and third-party copyright restrictions that may apply independently of the Creative Commons license.

Attribution Requirements

Reuse under CC BY 4.0 requires appropriate attribution.

Attribution should include, when reasonably available:

the author or authors;
the article title;
the International Journal of Medical Students as the original publication;
the publication year, volume, issue, and page or article information;
the article DOI or a link to the published version;
identification of the CC BY 4.0 license; and
an indication of whether the material was modified, translated, shortened, or adapted.

Attribution must not suggest endorsement by the authors, Journal, publisher, or affiliated institutions.

Suggested Attribution

Adapted from: Author(s). Article title. International Journal of Medical Students. Year;volume(issue):pages or article number. DOI. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Changes were made.

A conventional scholarly citation may satisfy part of the attribution requirement, but users must also identify the license and indicate material changes when applicable.

Authors may share and deposit permitted versions of their work through personal, institutional, academic, or subject repositories.

Authors may enter into separate nonexclusive arrangements for distribution of the published work, including:

deposit in an institutional repository;
deposit in a subject or disciplinary repository;
publication on a personal or institutional webpage;
inclusion in a thesis or dissertation;
inclusion in a later book or collected work;
distribution for teaching or professional purposes; and
sharing through scholarly networks.

The shared material should acknowledge its initial publication in the IJMS and, after publication, include the article DOI and a link to the final Journal record.

Authors must comply with any restrictions applying to third-party material included within the article.

Preprints and Prior Online Posting

Posting a manuscript in a recognized preprint server or repository does not automatically prevent submission to the IJMS.

Authors must disclose the preprint or prior online posting during submission and provide its citation, identifier, and link when available.

A preprint should:

be clearly identified as not having completed the Journal’s peer-review and publication process;
identify the authors accurately;
not be presented as the final published article;
be updated after publication to cite and link to the final IJMS article;
not violate confidentiality, consent, copyright, or institutional restrictions; and
not create duplicate or misleading publication records.

Authors should not replace a preprint silently with the publisher-formatted version when doing so would obscure the history or status of the document.

Preprints and overlapping publications are also subject to the Research Integrity policy.

Sharing the Published Version

The final published article may be shared according to the Creative Commons license displayed on the article webpage.

When sharing the final version, authors should:

use the official published citation;
include the DOI or link to the article webpage;
retain the copyright and license information;
retain correction, retraction, or other notices associated with the article;
avoid modifying the publisher-formatted file in a manner that could misrepresent it as the official version; and
identify adaptations or translations clearly.

The existence of an open license does not authorize removal of a correction, retraction notice, expression of concern, watermark, attribution, or other information necessary to understand the article’s publication status.

Third-Party and Protected Material

Authors are responsible for identifying material that they did not create or do not own and for obtaining any authorization required for publication and reuse.

Third-party material may include:

previously published figures or tables;
adapted diagrams or illustrations;
photographs created by another person;
questionnaires, scales, instruments, or assessment tools;
maps, artwork, screenshots, or software interfaces;
substantial quotations;
commercial or institutional logos;
licensed datasets;
patient or participant images; and
material supplied by a company, institution, publisher, or government body.

Permission should allow publication in an open-access article and the intended online, archival, and licensed distribution.

A credit line must identify material that is reproduced, adapted, used with permission, or excluded from the article’s Creative Commons license.

When third-party material is excluded from CC BY 4.0, users must obtain permission directly from the applicable rights holder unless another legal exception applies.

The Journal may request written evidence of permissions, licenses, releases, and consents before publication.

Author Representations and Responsibilities

By submitting and authorizing publication, the authors confirm that:

the work is original except for material identified and attributed appropriately;
the authors have authority to submit and publish the work;
the work is not under consideration by another publisher;
the work has not been published previously except as disclosed and permitted;
the authors have not transferred exclusive rights that conflict with publication by the Journal;
all authors approved submission and publication;
necessary permissions, licenses, and consents have been obtained;
the article does not knowingly contain unlawful, defamatory, infringing, or unauthorized material;
participant privacy and confidentiality have been protected;
funding and competing interests have been disclosed; and
the information supplied to the Journal is accurate and complete.

Authors must notify the Journal promptly when they discover a rights, permission, licensing, attribution, or legal problem affecting the submitted or published work.

The Journal may delay publication, remove material, decline the manuscript, withdraw acceptance, or correct the published record when the required rights cannot be established.

Government and Funder Requirements

Some authors, employers, institutions, governments, and research funders impose specific copyright, licensing, acknowledgment, repository-deposit, or public-access requirements.

Authors are responsible for:

identifying applicable requirements before publication;
informing the Journal of requirements that may affect the publication agreement;
providing required funding acknowledgments and grant information;
selecting an appropriate rights statement when a work is not eligible for ordinary copyright protection;
complying with repository or public-access mandates;
ensuring that employment agreements permit publication; and
resolving conflicts between funder, employer, institutional, and Journal requirements.

A government or funder requirement does not automatically change the license displayed on the article. Any exception or alternative rights statement must be approved and documented before publication.

Authors should raise special licensing or rights requirements during submission or as soon as they become known.

Preservation and Archiving

The Journal and publisher may preserve articles, metadata, supplementary materials, and publication notices through their publishing systems and external preservation, indexing, repository, or archival services.

Preservation may include:

the final published article;
bibliographic and citation metadata;
supplementary files;
license and copyright information;
corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions;
article-version information; and
links between an article and subsequent notices.

Archiving supports continuing access and preservation of the scholarly record. It does not authorize undisclosed changes to published content.

A retracted article ordinarily remains archived and accessible with its status clearly identified. Exceptional removal is governed by the Corrections, Retractions, and Appeals policy.

License and Publication-Agreement Changes

The license displayed on the published article establishes the terms under which that version was made available.

A license ordinarily cannot be revoked or replaced retroactively merely because an author later prefers different reuse conditions.

A change may be considered when:

the displayed license resulted from a production or metadata error;
the publication agreement was recorded incorrectly;
a government-employment or public-domain status was omitted;
a third-party restriction was not identified properly;
a legal requirement necessitates correction; or
another documented error affects the rights statement.

Any correction to copyright or licensing information must be transparent and must not restrict rights already exercised lawfully under the earlier license.

Questions concerning a specific article’s license should identify the article, DOI, current rights statement, requested correction, and supporting documentation.

Editorial Policies

Editorial independence, peer review, Journal governance, and separation of editorial decisions from financial interests.

Authorship and Disclosures

Authorship criteria, CRediT contributions, funding, competing interests, and author responsibilities.

Research Integrity

Originality, duplicate publication, plagiarism, attribution, preprints, and overlapping dissemination.

Corrections, Retractions, and Appeals

Corrections to copyright or licensing information, retractions, article removal, and preservation of the scholarly record.

Privacy and Data Protection

Personal-information handling, participant privacy, website data, and editorial-system confidentiality.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

The complete legal terms and explanatory summary for the Journal’s standard publication license.

Review the CC BY 4.0 License

Contact the Journal