Open Access and Licensing Policy

Loreto College Academic Press (LCAP) is committed to the Diamond Open Access model. We believe that scholarly knowledge is a public good, and our mission is to ensure that high-quality research is accessible to everyone, everywhere, without financial barriers.

1. Our Diamond Open Access Commitment

The Loreto College Open Book Platform ensures:

• Zero Author Fees: No Book Processing Charges (BPCs) or submission fees.
• Zero Reader Fees: No paywalls, subscriptions, or download costs.
• Immediate Availability: All works are accessible online from the moment of publication.

2. Licensing: Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND)

To protect the integrity of our authors' work while maximizing its educational reach, LCAP typically publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) license.

Under this license, readers are free to:

• Share: Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

Under the following terms:

• Attribution: You must give appropriate credit to the author(s) and Loreto College Academic Press.
• Non-Commercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes or financial gain.
• No Derivatives: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

Note: Authors seeking a more permissive license (such as CC BY-NC) for specific research projects may discuss this with the Editorial Board during the proposal stage.

3. Copyright and Rights Retention

• Author Ownership: Authors retain full copyright of their original work.
• Publishing Rights: By publishing with LCAP, authors grant the Press a non-exclusive right to publish, distribute, and archive the work in digital and print-on-demand formats.
• Self-Archiving: Authors are encouraged to deposit versions of their work in institutional repositories or personal websites, provided they link back to the official version on the LCAP Open Book Platform.

4. Impact of Our Open Policy

By removing the "pay-to-publish" and "pay-to-read" barriers, our platform provides:

• Global Visibility: Books are indexed in international databases, ensuring a wider reach than traditional print-only models.
• Educational Utility: Faculty and students can use entire books or individual chapters in classrooms without copyright hurdles.
• Increased Citations: Open access works historically receive higher engagement and citation rates within the global academic community.
• Knowledge Preservation: All digital files are archived using persistent identifiers (DOIs) to ensure they remain accessible for future generations of scholars.