Health Policy and Planning’s transition to Open Access: moving into the future

From 2024, Health Policy and Planning (HPP) will become a fully Open Access journal, in line with the overall trend in the publishing landscape.

A few decades ago, almost all journals were based on subscriptions, paid by libraries, universities and research institutes. More recently, we have seen strong growth in Open Access journals, where the cost of publishing is covered by authors, their funders or employing organizations.

At HPP, we have demonstrated our commitment to transitioning to a fully Open Access journal by gradually increasing our Open Access content in line with growth targets set by cOAlition S. This final step completes our transformative commitment to Open Access.

This change has no impact on the journal’s editorial policy, standards or processes.

Why is HPP shifting to fully Open Access?

In our nearly 40 years of publishing, HPP has provided an international forum for publishing original and high-quality research that addresses questions pertinent to policymakers, public health researchers and practitioners. By making all our content freely available to read, we are expanding our reach to anyone working in the field around the world.

This move will also support authors. Many research funders and institutes now require researchers to publish their findings on an Open Access basis. An added benefit of HPP’s Open Access model is that authors will be able to deposit the final version of their article in institutional and subject repositories. This allows them to comply with the policies of the National Institute of Health, the UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust, for example. In addition, the entire content of HPP will be automatically deposited by Oxford University Press in the PubMed Central repositories upon publication, removing the need for HPP authors to take this step. Finally, under the journal’s Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, all users are free to re-use the HPP content for non-commercial purposes, providing another benefit to the community.

When will our journal flip to Open Access?

From the 1 January 2024, all papers will be published on an Open Access basis. The deadline for submissions under the current hybrid model is 15 October 2023. Papers submitted from 16 October 2023, if accepted, will be published under the new Open Access agreement.

What can readers expect?

Readers can expect immediate access to the full set of papers published in HPP. Its current structure, with 10 issues per year, will remain. We will continue to include all article types (original articles, reviews, editorials, viewpoints, etc.) and supplements as before.

Who will be eligible for a fee waiver?

Whilst reactions to the possibility of HPP becoming a complete Open Access journal have, overall, been positive, we recognize that there are concerns regarding affordability for authors.

We have, therefore, worked out a model where full waivers will be automatically available for all authors from low-income countries. We will also consider waivers in other cases where authors have clear financial difficulties.

Further information on how to access waivers is available at https://academic.oup.com/heapol/pages/openaccess.

In conclusion, with this move to Open Access, HPP and its community will follow what is now a strong momentum to make scientific knowledge freely available while ensuring that waivers (full or part) are available. By doing this, we believe that the journal can play an even stronger role in wider, global dissemination of health policy and systems research. We very much hope that our readers and authors will continue to support HPP, and as always, we welcome comments and suggestions that will help shape our journal in the future. Please send in your queries and comments at [email protected].

Conflict of interest

None declared.