Open‑Access Policy

Rast Muzikoloji Dergisi / Rast Musicology Journal subscribes to the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). We provide immediate, free, and unrestricted access to all published content on the conviction that removing price and permission barriers accelerates scholarly communication and enriches global knowledge exchange.

Licensing
All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial‑NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY‑NC‑ND 4.0) licence. This permits users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to the full text, crawl for indexing, or use the material for any lawful purpose, provided that the work is properly cited, is not altered, and is not used for commercial purposes. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal a non‑exclusive licence to publish their work.

Compliance with DOAJ Best Practice
Fully Open Access: The full text of every article is available to all readers immediately upon publication; no embargoes apply.

Rigorous Peer Review: Each manuscript undergoes double‑blind peer review by at least two independent experts to ensure scholarly quality.

Digital Preservation: Published content is archived in the Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) digital preservation and the DergiPark Journal System (an academic publishing platform provided by The Scientific And Technological Research Council of Turkey) to guarantee long‑term availability.

Transparency and Ethics: The journal adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing endorsed by DOAJ and COPE.

Benefits for Authors
Visibility & Impact – Articles are freely and permanently available online, enhancing reach and citation potential.

Licence Compliance – The CC licence enables easy compliance with institutional or funder open‑access mandates.

Indexing – Articles are citation‑tracked and indexed in major bibliographic databases.

DOAJ Definition of Open Access

“Open Access” is a catch-all term covering both Gratis and Libre Open Access. For DOAJ, Open Access is only when digital content is freely available online AND user rights and the terms of copyright are defined. More than 20 years ago, Open Access was understood to mean content that was available for free without a price attached. This kind of Open Access is now referred to as Gratis Open Access*. Over time, as the concept of open access became more widely accepted, there was a need to be clearer about what users were allowed to do with the content. This meant that the users’ rights needed to be clearly stated. This kind of Open Access has no price barriers and removes at least some of the permission barriers. It is referred to as Libre Open Access*. This is where things start to get a little bit more complicated. Because different levels of permissions for reuse exist, like commercial use, creating translations etc (as indicated by the six different Creative Commons licenses, for example), different variants of Libre Open Access also exist.** At DOAJ, we believe that for Open Access to work effectively, user rights, through licensing, and copyright ownership need to be clear. For this reason DOAJ only accepts journals that operate a form of Libre Open Access.Finally, although we recommend strongly that copyright of published articles is retained by the authors, we will accept journals where copyright is transferred fully or in part to the publisher, as long as articles are licensed using an open license.

Budapest Open Access Initiative: Our Foundation
An enduring tradition—the willingness of scholars to publish without payment—has combined with the transformative power of the internet to create an unparalleled public good: world‑wide, free access to peer‑reviewed research literature. BOAI calls upon all stakeholders to eliminate price barriers, accelerate research, democratise education, and unite humanity in a common intellectual endeavour.

To realise this vision, BOAI recommends two complementary strategies:

Self‑Archiving – Equipping scholars to deposit refereed articles in open repositories compliant with Open Archives Initiative standards.

Open‑Access Journals – Supporting journals that remove subscription fees and employ sustainable funding models to offer permanent open access.

Rast Musicology Journal embraces both strategies, encouraging authors to self‑archive and committing to a permanently open‑access publishing model.

Open Access in Practice
Open access enables the dissemination of research without restriction to anyone with an internet connection. Abstracts and full texts published by Rast Musicology Journal are freely accessible immediately after publication. By adhering to BOAI and DOAJ principles, we ensure that scholarly communication remains equitable, global, and sustainable.

For further information or queries about our open‑access policy, please contact the editorial office at rastjournaleditor@gmail.com.