Open Access Policy

Journal of Quality Assurance and Higher Education Governance (JQAHEG) is committed to making research on quality assurance, accreditation, and higher education governance freely available to everyone who can use it: researchers, quality assurance practitioners, accreditation bodies, policymakers, and students, in every country and at every type of institution. This policy explains how JQAHEG provides open access, under which licence its articles are published, who holds copyright, how authors may archive their work, and what authors are charged. It is aligned with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the requirements of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

1. Open Access Statement

JQAHEG is a fully open access journal. All articles are made freely available online immediately upon publication, with no embargo period, no subscription, and no requirement for readers to register or log in.

In line with the definition set out by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002, reaffirmed in its 2012 and 2022 recommendations), open access at JQAHEG means that any user may, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author:

• read, download, and print the full text of articles;
• copy and redistribute articles in any medium or format;
• search, index, crawl, and link to the full text;
• pass articles as data to software, including for text and data mining; and
• adapt, translate, and build upon articles for any lawful purpose, including commercial purposes,

provided that the original work is properly attributed as described in Section 2.

Quality assurance and governance research has its greatest value when it reaches the people who design and operate quality systems. Many of those readers work in institutions, agencies, and countries that cannot afford journal subscriptions. Removing price and permission barriers allows the evidence published in JQAHEG to inform practice and policy wherever it is relevant.

2. Licensing Model

2.1 Licence Applied to All Articles

All articles published in JQAHEG are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).

Under CC BY 4.0, anyone may share and adapt the work for any purpose, including commercially, on the condition that they:

1. give appropriate credit: the author(s), the article title, Journal of Quality Assurance and Higher Education Governance, the volume, issue, and year, and the DOI or a link to the published version;
2. provide a link to the licence; and
3. indicate whether changes were made, without suggesting that the authors or the journal endorse the reuse or the changes.

No additional legal terms or technological measures may be applied that restrict others from doing anything the licence permits. The licence statement and the CC BY badge appear on the article landing page and in the published PDF, and the licence is recorded in the article metadata deposited with indexing services.

2.2 Why CC BY 4.0

JQAHEG adopts CC BY 4.0 as its single default licence because it:

• is the licence recommended by DOAJ and the BOAI as the standard for open access publishing;
• complies with the open access requirements of major research funders and of Plan S (cOAlition S);
• allows the unrestricted reuse that quality assurance practice depends on, such as quoting findings in accreditation guidelines, institutional self-evaluation reports, training materials, and policy briefs, without requesting permission; and
• is compatible with deposit in institutional, national, and subject repositories.

More restrictive licences, such as CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND, were not adopted because they prevent legitimate reuse by accreditation agencies, consultancies, and publishers of textbooks, and create uncertainty about what counts as commercial use. CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike) was also considered. It is a valid open licence, but its requirement that every adaptation be released under the same licence can obstruct reuse in reports and teaching materials that are published under other terms. JQAHEG therefore uses CC BY 4.0, which keeps attribution as the only condition.

2.3 Third-Party Material

The CC BY 4.0 licence applies only to content for which the authors hold the rights. Figures, tables, images, instruments, or extended quotations taken from other sources remain subject to their original terms. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce such material under an open licence, and for identifying it clearly in the caption or text (for example, “Reproduced from … with permission; not covered by the article's CC BY licence”).

3. Copyright

3.1 Authors Retain Copyright

Authors who publish in JQAHEG retain copyright in their work without restriction. JQAHEG does not require authors to transfer copyright to the journal or the publisher.

On acceptance, the corresponding author, on behalf of all co-authors, grants JQAHEG a non-exclusive licence to publish the article and to be identified as its original publisher. This licence allows the journal to:

• publish, reproduce, and distribute the article in electronic and print form;
• assign a DOI and deposit metadata and full text with indexing, abstracting, and archiving services; and
• release the article to the public under CC BY 4.0.

3.2 Rights of Authors

Because they retain copyright, authors may, without asking the journal:

• reuse all or part of the article in their own later work, such as books, theses, dissertations, and teaching materials, with citation of the original publication;
• deposit any version of the article in repositories as set out in Section 4;
• share the article with colleagues, students, and institutions, and post it on personal websites and academic networking platforms;
• present the work at conferences and in professional training; and
• enter into separate, non-exclusive agreements for further distribution of the published version (for example, inclusion in an edited volume), provided that JQAHEG is acknowledged as the place of first publication.

3.3 Rights of Readers and Other Users

Readers and other users have all the rights described in Section 1 and granted by CC BY 4.0. They do not need to ask permission from the authors or the journal for any reuse that complies with the licence.

3.4 Author Warranties

By submitting a manuscript, authors confirm that:

• the work is original, has not been published elsewhere in substantially the same form, and is not under consideration by another journal;
• all listed authors have approved the submission and agreed to publication under CC BY 4.0; and
• the work does not infringe any copyright or other rights of third parties, and appropriate permissions have been obtained for any third-party material.

3.5 Summary of Rights

4. Self-Archiving Policy (Green Open Access)

JQAHEG supports Green open access alongside its Gold open access publication. Authors may deposit any version of their article, at any time, with no embargo period, in any repository or website, including:

• institutional repositories of the authors' universities or agencies;
• national repositories and portals;
• subject repositories and preprint servers (for example, SSRN, EdArXiv, or SocArXiv);
• funder-mandated repositories; and
• personal or departmental websites and academic networking sites (for example, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or ORCID-linked profiles).

4.1 Versions Covered

• Preprint (submitted version): the manuscript as first submitted, before peer review. It may be shared at any time, including before and during review. After acceptance, authors should add the note “This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Quality Assurance and Higher Education Governance”, and after publication, the full citation and DOI link.
• Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM): the final manuscript after peer review and acceptance, before copyediting and typesetting. It may be shared immediately on acceptance, with the full citation (once available), a link to the published version via its DOI, and the CC BY 4.0 licence statement.
• Version of Record (VoR): the final published PDF or HTML as it appears on the journal website. It may be shared immediately on publication, without alteration, retaining the journal's citation, DOI, and licence statement.

4.2 Preprints and Double-Blind Review

Posting a preprint does not count as prior publication and does not disqualify a manuscript from consideration. Because JQAHEG uses double-blind peer review, authors who post a preprint should not mention it in the anonymised manuscript, and reviewers are asked not to search for it. Authors must declare the existence of any preprint, with its link, on the title page at submission.

4.3 Recommended Attribution Text

This is the [author accepted manuscript / published version] of an article published in Journal of Quality Assurance and Higher Education Governance, [Volume]([Issue]), [Year], [pages]. DOI: [https://doi.org/...]. Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).

4.4 Registration with Policy Directories

JQAHEG's self-archiving policy is intended for registration in the Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa Romeo) so that repository managers can verify permissions without contacting the journal.

5. Archiving, Preservation, and Discoverability

To guarantee permanent access to everything it publishes, even if the journal ceases publication, JQAHEG:

• preserves its content through the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), a distributed archive based on LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology that stores copies of the journal's content across multiple participating libraries and allows the content to be restored if the journal website becomes unavailable;
• assigns persistent identifiers (DOIs) to all published articles, so that links and citations remain valid if the journal's web address changes;
• exposes article metadata through OAI-PMH, allowing harvesting by repositories, indexing services, and library discovery systems; and
• maintains a complete online archive of all past issues on the journal website, freely accessible without registration.

Published articles are never removed from the archive except in the rare circumstances described in the journal's retraction and correction policy, in which case the article's landing page and metadata remain available with a clear notice.

6. Article Processing Charges (APC) and Fees

6.1 Current Fees

• Submission fee: none (free).
• Article Processing Charge (APC): none (free).
• Page or colour charges: none (free).
• Fee to read or download articles: none (free).

The costs of operating the journal, including editorial management, peer review coordination, copyediting, typesetting, DOI registration, hosting, and preservation, are currently borne by the publishing institution. Editors and reviewers are not paid per manuscript.

6.2 Principles That Will Apply If Fees Are Introduced

JQAHEG is committed to full transparency about any fees. If the journal decides in future to introduce an APC or any other charge, it will:

1. announce the change publicly on the journal website at least three months before the fee takes effect, stating the amount in Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) and US Dollars (USD);
2. not apply the fee retroactively: manuscripts submitted before the effective date will be published under the terms in force at the time of submission;
3. charge only after acceptance, never at submission or during peer review;
4. keep editorial decisions independent of payment: editors and reviewers will have no access to information about an author's ability or willingness to pay, and payment will never influence an editorial decision; and
5. state exactly what the fee covers.

For reference, an APC, if introduced, would contribute to the following costs only:

• management of the editorial and peer review process through the journal's submission system;
• language and copyediting, typesetting, and production of the PDF and HTML versions;
• DOI registration with Crossref and similarity checking of manuscripts;
• website hosting, maintenance, and long-term preservation; and
• indexing and metadata dissemination.

An APC would not be a charge for acceptance, and paying it would not guarantee publication.

6.3 Waiver Policy

Should an APC be introduced, JQAHEG will offer:

• automatic full waivers for corresponding authors based in countries classified as low-income economies by the World Bank, or included in the Research4Life Group A list;
• partial or full waivers on request for authors without funding, early-career researchers, and students, assessed case by case; and
• the possibility of discretionary waivers for invited articles and editorials.

Waiver requests will be submitted at the time of submission, handled by the editorial office separately from the editors handling the manuscript, and will have no bearing on the editorial decision.

7. Advertising, Sponsorship, and Revenue

JQAHEG does not display commercial advertising on its website or in its articles. Any future sponsorship or institutional support will be disclosed on the journal website and will have no influence on editorial decisions.

8. Policy Review and Contact

This policy is reviewed at least once a year by the Editorial Board and updated in line with developments in BOAI, DOAJ, and COPE guidance. Questions about open access, licensing, copyright, or self-archiving may be directed to the editorial office through the contact details on the journal's Contact page.