Open Access Policy

Impact Surgery is a fully open access journal. All articles are made freely available online immediately upon publication, with no embargo period. Readers worldwide may read, download, copy, distribute, and share published content without restriction. Editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit, relevance, and compliance with journal policies. Manuscripts are assessed independently of authors’ ability to pay article processing charges (APCs).

Licensing

All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence permits use, distribution, reproduction, and adaptation of the work for any purpose, including commercial use, provided appropriate credit is given to the original work. Licence information is displayed on each article’s webpage and PDF. Where third-party material is included under different licence terms, this is clearly indicated within the article.

Repository and self-archiving

To maximise dissemination and reuse, authors may deposit their work in institutional, funder, or subject repositories at any time, with no embargo. This applies to all versions of the manuscript, including preprints, author accepted manuscripts (AAMs), and the version of record (VoR). Deposited versions should include the full journal citation and digital object identifier (DOI) and, where possible, provide a link to the published version on the journal website.

PubMed Central and funder requirements

For research funded by organisations with public access mandates, including NIH, UKRI, NIHR, Wellcome, Gates, and other major funders, authors are permitted to deposit the final published version of their article in PubMed Central or Europe PMC immediately upon publication, with no embargo.

Where required by funder policy, the journal supports authors in ensuring compliant deposit in PubMed Central or Europe PMC in the appropriate format and within required timeframes. This policy is intended to be compatible with Plan S, cOAlition S, and other major open access requirements.