Open Access Policy

Open Access

Open access (OA) refers to free and unrestricted online access to scientific and scholarly information and makes published academic research freely and permanently available online. The concept of open access was firstly defined by The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). The Publisher defines open access by the followings: peer-reviewed article is freely available without subscription or price barriers, article is immediately released in open access format (no embargo period), and published material can be re-used without obtaining permission as long as a correct citation to the original publication is given.
Please note that some materials such as figures, tables or text in articles may from other publications. In this case, you should inquire with the original copyright holder (usually the original publisher or authors), whether or not this material can be re-used.

 

Open Access Information and Policy

Articles published in MCB are under an open access license, which means all OA content is fully open to all and free of charge. Published materials can be re-used if properly accredited and cited. Open access publication is supported by the authors' institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.

 

License

MCB publishes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution License and are using the CC BY license, MCB believes that open access publishing fosters the exchange of research results amongst scientists from different disciplines, thus facilitating interdisciplinary research.

 

Advantages of Open Access

Open Access provides greater availability and visibility of the academic works, which leads to more citations and greater research impact. For the researcher or author, Open Access increases the audience for a publication far beyond the audience of any non-Open Access journal. As a reader, you have barrier-free access to the literature you need for your research. Access is not constrained by subscription costs or library budgets.
Open Access journals usually provide faster publication, accepted articles are typically published online more rapidly in the journal than those of traditional, subscription-based and printed journals are.

 

Data Sharing Policies

Researchers are to share their data to provide other researchers the ability to expand and build upon their published claims. Authors are encouraged to share and make available any data and materials supporting the results or analyses presented in their paper. Research data can be uploaded to repositories with the access information included in the article or appended in supplementary files. Any restrictions on the availability of the published research materials or relevant information therein must be disclosed to the editors directly at the time of submission and cited in the submitted manuscript.

 

Data Repository Guidance

Authors are advised to deposit data in a recognized data repository where possible, or to generalist repositories if no suitable community resource is available.

We encourage researchers to consider the FAIR Data Principles when depositing data. We further advise researchers to refer to the FAIRsharing.org and re3data.org websites for the search of a suitable repository – both websites provide a list of certified data repositories.

 

Data Availability Statement

Authors are encouraged to provide a data availability statement (DAS), detailing where data associated with a paper can be found and how it can be accessed, including, where applicable, hyperlinks to datasets utilized or generated therein. The DAS should be included in the submitted manuscript, before the ‘References’ section (not required for review articles), clearly indicating the location and access manner of the study’s data being shared, and providing an explanation to the unavailability of the data which cannot be released. 

 

During a peer-review, the Journal's editors may require, as a condition for publication, that the data supporting the results in the paper be peer-reviewed and archived in an appropriate public repository. In such cases, a data availability statement is required, with a list of citations for the shared data, and  a link to the repository used. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure the soundness of any shared data. Any errors in the data rest solely on the provider of the shared dataset(s). Peer reviewers and editors will be rigorously examining the manuscript’s data availability statement and its compliance with the journal’s data sharing policy.