Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
An article is published online behind a subscription paywall on 1 January; the accepted manuscript is deposited in a repository the same day under a 12-month embargo, so the date of first open access is 1 January of the following year -- the date the embargo expires -- not the original publication date.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A gold open access article with no embargo has the same date of online publication and date of first open access -- there is no meaningful gap between the two, because open access begins immediately at publication.
Editorial commentary
Date of first open access is the date a work was first made publicly available on an open access basis — whichever event actually triggers open availability for that particular copy. Depending on the route, this could be the date a repository copy becomes discoverable, the date an embargo expires, or the date a publisher makes the work openly available on its own website.
Why “first” matters
A single work can become open access more than once, through different routes, at different times — and CASRAI’s vocabulary specifically tracks the first such date because it is what establishes when open access to the work genuinely began, regardless of which route achieved it first:
- A gold open access article published with no embargo has a date of first open access equal to its date of online publication.
- An article self-archived under a green open access route becomes open only once its embargo expires — its date of first open access is that expiry date, not its earlier deposit date.
- If a work becomes open through more than one route (for example, a repository copy opens before the publisher later makes its own version openly available), the earlier of the two dates is the date of first open access.
How this differs from related dates
Date of first open access should not be confused with date of deposit (when a copy enters a repository, which may still be under embargo) or date of online publication (when the work first went live online, whether openly or behind a paywall). A work can be deposited or published online well before it becomes openly accessible to the public.
Worked example
An article is published online behind a subscription paywall on 1 January. The accepted manuscript is deposited in a repository the same day, under a 12-month embargo. The date of first open access is 1 January of the following year — the date the embargo expires and the repository copy becomes publicly downloadable — not the original publication date.
Counter-example
A gold open access article with no embargo has the same date of online publication and date of first open access — there is no meaningful gap between the two, because open access begins immediately at publication.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a work have more than one “open access” date?
A work can become open through more than one route at different times (for example, a repository copy and a later publisher-hosted open version), but CASRAI’s vocabulary records only the earliest such date as the date of first open access.
Is date of first open access the same as date of publication?
Only when there is no embargo and no delay — for an embargoed or delayed-access work, the date of first open access falls later than the date of online publication.
Why track this date separately from the deposit date?
Because deposit and public visibility are not the same event — a work can be deposited well before it becomes openly accessible if an embargo or a repository’s quality-check queue delays public release.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Date of first open access"
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"description": "The date that a work was first made publicly available on an Open Access (OA) basis. For example, this could be the date that a copy of the work was made live (discoverable) on an OA basis on a repository or may be triggered when an embargo period expires. It could also be when an work was available on a publisher web site, or elsewhere, on an OA basis.",
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},
"dateModified": "2026-08-17T01:58:47",
"inLanguage": "en"
}
