Open Access Policy

Open Access Policy

Relations: Journal of Media Studies and Public Relations provides immediate open access to all of its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This journal is an open access journal, which means that all content is freely available without charge to users or institutions. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, provided that such use remains consistent with the journal’s licensing terms. This policy is in accordance with the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

Budapest Open Access Initiative

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. Together, they make possible the worldwide electronic distribution of peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.

Removing access barriers to scholarly literature accelerates research, enriches education, broadens the circulation of knowledge, and strengthens the global exchange of ideas. Open access increases the visibility, readership, and impact of scholarly work while enabling knowledge to be shared more equitably across disciplines, institutions, and countries.

By “open access,” this journal means the free availability of scholarly literature on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only limitations on reproduction and distribution are those necessary to ensure the integrity of the work and the right of authors to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Although peer-reviewed journal literature should be freely accessible online to readers, its publication still requires editorial, technical, and publishing support. Nevertheless, open access remains a more inclusive and effective model for disseminating scholarly work than access-limited systems. It enables wider circulation of knowledge while supporting the mission of academic institutions, journals, researchers, and the public.

To advance open access to scholarly literature, the Budapest Open Access Initiative identifies two complementary strategies: self-archiving and open access journals. Self-archiving allows scholars to deposit their work in openly accessible repositories, while open access journals ensure that peer-reviewed articles are published and made immediately available to all readers without subscription barriers. These approaches work together to expand access to knowledge and strengthen scholarly communication.

As an open access journal, Relations: Journal of Media Studies and Public Relations supports the broad dissemination of peer-reviewed research and is committed to ensuring that all published articles remain openly accessible and responsibly used by the academic community and the wider public. The journal encourages the development of a scholarly communication system in which knowledge can circulate freely, ethically, and globally for the advancement of research, education, and society.