As a leader in scholarly publishing, the University of Chicago Press embraces its obligation to disseminate scholarship of the highest standard and to foster scholarly conversation within and across traditional disciplines. We believe there is no single way to distribute scholarly writing that serves all communities equally. To ensure that we meet the needs and norms of each of the many disciplines we serve, we have developed practices and policies around open and free access and author rights with the guidance of the editors and society sponsors of the journals we publish.

The University of Chicago Press supports green open access across its entire portfolio of journals.

Green open access refers to the ability of authors to self-archive their own work and make it freely available through institutional or disciplinary repositories. Authors may deposit either the published PDF of their article or the final accepted version of the manuscript after peer review (but not proofs of the article) in a non-commercial repository where it can be made freely available no sooner than twelve (12) months after publication of the article in the journal. If a shorter embargo period is required by government or funding body mandate, only the final accepted version of the manuscript may be released.

Authors may also post their article in its published form on their personal or departmental web, use their article in teaching or research presentations, provide single copies in print or electronic form to their colleagues, or republish their article in a subsequent work. For further information on how authors can reuse their published work, please consult The University of Chicago Press Guidelines for Journal Authors' Rights.

Gold open access, also called author-pays publication, allows authors to make the electronic version of their article freely available on the journal website, in perpetuity, for a fee, which may be paid by the author directly or by an institution or funding body. Select University of Chicago Press journals, listed below, allow authors to request gold open access, which is granted at the discretion of the editor. It is primarily provided for authors who have a funder that mandates this form of open access. For all other journals, please consult the journal editor.

Articles published as gold open access are made available under a CC BY-NC license, which allows for their non-commercial reuse. If a CC BY or other license is required by your funding body (as, for example, the RCUK), please notify the journal office. Articles published under a CC BY license are subject to an additional fee.

• American Journal of Education
• American Naturalist
• American Political Thought
• The Biological Bulletin
• The China Journal
• Classical Philology
• Comparative Education Review
• Critical Inquiry
• Current Anthropology
• Economic Development and Cultural Change
• Elementary School Journal
• Freshwater Science
• HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
• History of Humanities
• History of Religions
• HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science
• International Journal of American Linguistics
• International Journal of Plant Sciences
• Isis
• Journal of Human Capital
• The Journal of Geology
• Journal of Labor Economics
• Journal of Law and Courts
• The Journal of Modern History
• Journal of Near Eastern Studies
• Journal of Political Economy
• Journal of Religion
• Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research
• The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy
• Modern Philology
• Philosophy of Science
• Physiological and Biochemical Zoology
• The Quarterly Review of Biology
  Signs
• Social Service Review
• Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture

Free issues and articles
Certain issues and articles published in University of Chicago Press journals may be made freely available, either following a particular policy of the journal or its sponsoring society or at the discretion of the editor or publisher. For example, articles in the Focus section of Isis, which are designed to attract readers in all areas of the field by dealing with themes that cut across chronological boundaries, are always free. In addition, the following journals make each issue freely accessible after an embargo of two years: Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, NBER Macroeconomics Annual, and Tax Policy and the Economy. All articles published more than 95 years ago, for which copyright has expired, are made available for free.

The following ceased titles are freely available on the University of Chicago Press Journals Division website: Innovation Policy and the Economy, the NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics, and the Supreme Court Economic Review.

Free issues and articles for a University of Chicago Press journal are identified by the  icon next to an issue in the list of issues, or an article in an issue’s Table of Contents.

Open-access journal
The University of Chicago Press publishes one open-access journal: Signs and Society.

Free-access journal
The University of Chicago Press publishes one free-access journal: HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. This model provides one month of free access after the release of each new issue, and then requires a subscription for continuous access to content. All HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory content published from 2011–2017 is open access. 

Free access in developing nations 
Through the Chicago Emerging Nations Initiative (CENI), the University of Chicago Press makes its complete portfolio of journals freely available to more than 5,000 qualified institutions in emerging nations throughout the world.