Open Access Policy

Publishing Policy

Open Access Policy

Our commitment to free, immediate, and universal access to scholarly research.

QUALITATIVE STUDIES is committed to the principles of open access publishing. We believe that scholarly knowledge should be freely available to the global community to support research, teaching, and learning across disciplines and borders. All articles published in this journal are immediately and permanently accessible online, free of charge, to readers worldwide.

1. What is Open Access?

Open access means that all published content is freely available on the public internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles. Users are allowed to crawl the content for indexing, use it as data for software, or distribute it in printed form, provided that proper attribution is given to the original authors and source.

2. License

All articles published in QUALITATIVE STUDIES are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Under this license, authors and users are free to:

✓ Share

Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

✓ Adapt

Remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms: Attribution — Appropriate credit must be given, a link to the license must be provided, and any changes must be indicated. This may be done in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the user or their use.

3. Author Rights

Authors who publish in QUALITATIVE STUDIES agree to the following terms:

Retention of Copyright: Authors retain the copyright of their work and grant the journal the right of first publication.
Self-Archiving: Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories, on their personal websites, or on academic social networks) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and earlier citation of published work.
Distribution: Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of their work (e.g., post it to a repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Online Posting: Authors are allowed to disseminate their work online through platforms such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or Google Scholar.

4. Reader Rights

Readers of QUALITATIVE STUDIES have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of all articles without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as proper attribution is given. There are no subscription fees, paywalls, or registration requirements to access the content.

5. Publication Fees

QUALITATIVE STUDIES does not charge any Article Processing Charges (APCs), submission fees, or page charges. Publishing in this journal is completely free of charge for authors. This policy is made possible through the institutional support of Bale Beleq Indonesia, which is committed to advancing open scholarly communication.

6. Archiving & Preservation

To ensure the long-term preservation of scholarly content, QUALITATIVE STUDIES employs digital preservation strategies and is indexed in multiple academic databases and repositories, including Google Scholar, Crossref, and other relevant indexing services. Each published article is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to guarantee permanent accessibility and citability.

Our Commitment

By embracing open access, QUALITATIVE STUDIES contributes to the democratisation of knowledge and supports the global academic community in advancing qualitative research across disciplines. We invite researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to read, cite, and build upon the work published in our journal to foster inclusive and dialogical scholarship.