Types of Scholarly Communication: Green, Gold and Preprint-First Pathways

Types of scholarly communication fall into five working pathways that research-office staff need to distinguish: subscription (toll-access), green open access, gold open access, diamond/platinum open access, and preprint-first dissemination. Each differs in who pays, when a reader can access the work, and which version of the manuscript is shared.

Scholarly communication is the system by which researchers create, evaluate through peer review, publish, and preserve their findings so other scholars and the public can build on them. Understanding the five pathways below gives research-office staff a shared vocabulary before any policy conversation with faculty about funder mandates, licensing, or repository deposit.

• What is scholarly communication?
• What are the five scholarly communication pathways?
• How does green open access work?
• How does gold open access differ from green?
• What is the preprint-first pathway?
• Which pathway do UK and EU funder policies require?
• Frequently asked questions
• What this means for research offices

What is scholarly communication?

Scholarly communication covers both formal channels — peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, monographs — and informal channels, such as preprints, working papers, and repository deposits. It spans the full research life cycle: creation, evaluation, dissemination, and long-term preservation.

The system exists so that findings can be verified, cited, and reused. Which pathway a given output takes determines how quickly it becomes available, to whom, and under what licence.

What are the five scholarly communication pathways?

Most research outputs move through one of five distinct pathways, distinguished by who bears the cost, how quickly a reader gets access, and which manuscript version is made available.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO)‘s Journal Article Versions recommended practice (NISO RP-8-2008) defines the version terminology used across these pathways — Author’s Original, Accepted Manuscript, Proof, and Version of Record — so repositories and publishers describe deposits consistently.

How does green open access work?

Green open access is self-archiving: an author publishes in a subscription journal as usual, then deposits the peer-reviewed Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) — not the publisher’s typeset Version of Record — into an institutional or subject repository.

Publishers typically attach an embargo of six months in many STEM fields and up to twelve or twenty-four months in some social-science and humanities journals before the AAM can be released. Funders aligned with cOAlition S‘s Rights Retention Strategy avoid this delay: an author asserts, at submission, that a CC BY licence will apply to the AAM regardless of what the publisher later requires, making the green route immediate rather than embargoed.

How does gold open access differ from green?

Gold open access makes the final, published Version of Record freely available on the publisher’s own site from the date of publication, with no embargo. It is usually funded through an article processing charge (APC) paid by the author, their institution, or their funder.

• Fully open access journals publish only OA content and typically apply a CC BY licence.
• Hybrid journals are subscription titles that offer OA on a per-article basis for an APC.
• Diamond (or platinum) open access removes the APC entirely — costs are absorbed by a university press, learned society, or funder consortium, a model the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) tracks separately from APC-funded gold titles.

What is the preprint-first pathway?

Preprint-first publishing means posting a manuscript to a public server — arXiv (physics, maths, computer science, since 1991), bioRxiv or medRxiv (life and health sciences), or SSRN (social sciences) — before or during formal peer review.

This pathway prioritises speed and priority-of-discovery over the certification that peer review provides. Preprints are typically labelled with a version number and a clear notice that they have not been peer-reviewed, and most are later revised and submitted to a journal for gold, green, or diamond publication. The pathway is complementary, not a substitute, for peer-reviewed publication.

Which pathway do UK and EU funder policies require?

UKRI’s Open Access Policy, in force for peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers submitted for publication from 1 April 2022, requires immediate open access on publication — either gold with a CC BY licence, or green via a zero-embargo AAM deposit. UKRI extended the same requirement to academic books, chapters, and edited collections for outputs published from 1 January 2024, which brings monograph outputs into scope for the REF 2029 assessment period.

cOAlition S‘s Plan S applies a comparable immediate-OA requirement across its member funders in Europe, using the Rights Retention Strategy described above to guarantee an open, CC BY-licensed AAM regardless of individual publisher embargo policies. Research offices advising faculty should treat funder mandate compliance, not personal preference, as the deciding factor in which pathway a given output must follow.

Frequently asked questions

What is scholarly communication?

Scholarly communication is the system through which academics create, evaluate through peer review, publish, and preserve research so it can be verified and reused. It includes both formal outputs, such as journal articles, and informal channels, such as preprints and repository deposits.

What is an example of scholarly communication?

A peer-reviewed journal article deposited as a green open-access Author’s Accepted Manuscript is a typical example. Conference proceedings, monographs, datasets with a DOI, and preprints posted to servers such as arXiv or bioRxiv are also recognised forms.

What are the different types of academic communication?

Academic communication splits into formal channels — peer-reviewed journals, books, and conference proceedings that carry certification and permanence — and informal channels, including preprints, blogs, conference talks, and social media, which prioritise speed over formal peer review.

What is the difference between green and gold open access?

Green open access deposits a free accepted manuscript in a repository, often after an embargo; gold open access makes the publisher’s final Version of Record free immediately, usually funded by an article processing charge. The reader outcome — free access — is the same; the timing, version, and funding model differ.

What this means for research offices

Research-administration staff need this vocabulary before, not during, a funder-compliance dispute. Advising faculty to route a UKRI- or cOAlition S-funded article through green self-archiving without confirming zero-embargo rights retention, for example, risks a non-compliant deposit discovered only at reporting time.

As monograph open-access requirements phase in ahead of REF 2029, and as preprint servers become an accepted first step in more disciplines, institutions should document which pathway applies to which funder and output type as reference material for their researchers — a table like the one above, adapted to local funder mix, is a practical starting point.