Open Access

1. What Open Access Is and Why It Is a Matter of Principle

Open access is the condition in which the copyright holder of an academic work grants others the right of use through an open license, enabling immediate and free access to the work and authorizing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link, or use the content for legitimate purposes, without requiring additional permission.

This definition is consistent with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the foundational framework of the open access movement, adopted in 2002 and current as an international reference in editorial, institutional, and scientific funding policies.

For PanAmerican DH&AI, open access is not simply a publication modality: it is a decision of principle consistent with the journal's mission. Research that needs to be found behind a paywall does not fulfill its function. Research that can be read, cited, translated, and built upon by any researcher across the Americas — from a public university in Lima, from an institute in Bogotá, from a laboratory in Mexico City, or from a library in Florida — does.

2. Diamond Open Access Model

The journal operates under the Diamond Open Access model, which is the most equitable form of open access academic publishing:

There are no article processing charges (APCs), no submission fees, no editorial correction costs, and no institutional subscriptions. The financing of the editorial project is the responsibility of the publishing organization, Anglo Latín Culture 369 Corp., within the framework of PAC-DHCAI.

This model eliminates the two main barriers that have historically excluded Latin American researchers from the international scientific publishing ecosystem: the inability to pay APCs to publish, and the inability of institutions to pay subscriptions to access.

3. Publication License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0

All articles published in PanAmerican DH&AI are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0). Authors retain copyright over their work.

3.1 What This License Permits

  • Read, download, and print any published article, without restrictions.
  • Copy and distribute the article in any medium or format.
  • Adapt, translate, summarize, or build upon the work to create new works.
  • Share the article in institutional repositories, academic networks, and dissemination platforms.
  • Cite and reference the work in other scientific publications.

All permitted uses require explicit attribution to the original author(s) and the journal, with the full bibliographic citation and a link to the original article.

3.2 What This License Does Not Permit

  • Using the work or its derivatives for commercial purposes, including selling, direct monetization, or incorporation into paid products or services.
  • Presenting the work as one's own without attribution to the original author.
  • Applying legal terms or technological measures that restrict third parties from exercising the rights granted by the license.

3.3 Why CC BY-NC 4.0 and Not Another License

The decision to use CC BY-NC 4.0 rather than other variants reflects a deliberate balance between openness and protection, grounded in three reasons:

CC BY-NC 4.0 allows researchers to adapt, translate, and build upon published works — essential in an interdisciplinary field like digital humanities. At the same time, the non-commercial restriction protects authors and the journal. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 prohibits derivatives, which would prevent translations and adaptations — inconsistent with this journal's mission.

4. Copyright

Authors who publish in PanAmerican DH&AI retain copyright over their work. By submitting a manuscript and accepting publication, authors grant the journal the non-exclusive right to publish, distribute, and archive the work in digital format under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

This means that authors retain the right to:

  • Deposit their work in institutional or thematic repositories (preprint, postprint, or published version).
  • Share it on their personal academic profiles (Academia.edu, ResearchGate, ORCID, institutional website).
  • Reuse it in books, book chapters, theses, or any other of their own publications, with attribution to the original publication.
  • Translate it into other languages for dissemination in other academic communities.
  • Present it at conferences and academic events.

The journal does not require the exclusive transfer of copyright as a condition of publication. This policy is aligned with the recommendations of SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and with international best practices in open access academic publishing.

5. Digital Archiving and Preservation

Long-term preservation of published content is a central editorial responsibility. PanAmerican DH&AI ensures the permanent archiving of all its articles through the following strategies:

6. Indexing Roadmap and International Visibility

Indexing in recognized databases is the mechanism by which a journal gains visibility, credibility, and reach in the international scientific community. PanAmerican DH&AI has designed its editorial structure from its foundations to meet the criteria of the leading indexing systems. The roadmap is articulated in three phases:

7. Benefits of Open Access for Authors

Publishing in a quality open access journal has demonstrable and concrete advantages for researchers: