The guide is primarily intended for editors and publishers of scientific journals as a support for the proper design and clear presentation of information on websites about open access publishing policies and open access publishing opportunities for researchers. Information on open access, copyright and compliance with funders' requirements is often inconsistently presented, and the guide encourages more transparent and consistent practice, thus contributing to greater transparency in open access scholarly publishing.

The journal must have its own web address (URL) and a permanently accessible website. All articles must be published on the website in full text and in the recommended formats (e.g. PDF or HTML).

The following information must be available on the journal's website:

• print and/or electronic ISSN (International Standard Serial Number). which is clearly stated on the magazine's website and can be verified at ISSN register,
• Editorial policy (purpose and aims of the journal, conditions for acceptance and processing of contributions, Method and duration of the review process, name Editorial boardinternal organs, technical Instructions for preparing articles or of submitted manuscripts, history of the journal),
• Privacy statement – collection and use of personal data of the journal must follow standards based on the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),
• A statement of adherence to publishing and academic ethical standards - publications should follow the COPE (Committee on the Ethics of Scientific Publication) to ensure fair editorial decisions and respectful treatment of authors.
• statement of Research data management provision of open access and explanation of exceptions, FAIR principles, potential licensing, citiranje, shranjevanje in seznam zaupanja vreden repozitorij ipd.),
• Statement on the use of generative artificial intelligence in the preparation of articles.

Open access journal content, once published, must be immediately and freely available on the website.

The journal's website must clearly publish its open access policy, either in the general journal information or in a dedicated section. In addition to a statement about providing immediate and free access to content, the open access policy information should include:

• information about the journal's open access status, from which the open access model (e.g. gold) is evident. It is also recommended to indicate the year the journal transitioned from subscription to open access, or the year a newly established open access journal was launched.,
• statement on permitted uses – e.g. that the content may be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, adapted and further used, with attribution to the author, in accordance with the chosen license,
• the exact license – it is recommended to use Creative Commons licenses (e.g. CC BY 4.0),
• overview of publication costs – if it is diamond open access, the journal should explicitly state that it does not charge any publication fees, if it is gold open access, the statement should be APC (Article Processing Charges) costs clearly stated,
• Self-archiving policy – the journal should clearly state on its website which versions authors are allowed to upload to trusted repositories (e.g. preprint, accepted manuscript, or published version of the article). For some journals, this is also evident from JISC - Open policy finder. 

Copyright and open licence usage notices should be clearly written. In accordance with open access policies, authors entirely retain copyright or non-exclusively transfer the material copyright to the publisher. Authors grant the publisher first publication of their work under a selected open licence, which specifies further terms of use of the work (permitted are CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0). The chosen licence should be clearly stated on the journal's website, as well as in the journal itself and on each article individually. If copyright arises on the research data (or metadata), the authors must publish it under an open licence.

First, the copyright notice in the article:

»© 2025 Author(s). This article is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Example of instructions for authors (on the journal's website):

»Authors retain the physical copyright, and grant permission to the publisher to publish their work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), which means that all users are permitted to copy and distribute the content in any medium and format, and to adapt the content for any purpose, including commercial purposes, provided that they appropriately credit the author of the work.«

The journal must ensure compliance with national policies and funders' requirements regarding open access, or international guidelines such as Plan S and Horizon Europe. .is this magazine co-financed with public funds (e.g., by ARIS, this must also be clearly stated. Where an individual article is the result of research co-funded by public funds, the name of the funder and the code and title of the research project or programme must be stated alongside it.

The visibility, accessibility and credibility of published scientific content are enhanced by the inclusion of journals in international bibliographic databases. For open-access journals, submission to the Directory of Open Access Journals is particularly recommended. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which only includes open access journals. Before applying, journals should check that they meet the criteria for inclusion in DOAJ, published in official guidelines directory.

Ensuring the visibility, recognition and citation of articles and their associated research data is achieved by using persistent identifiers (such as. DOI ali Handle), they enable reliable linking, citation, and long-term accessibility of digital objects. It is recommended that persistent identifiers are also used for authors or researchers (e.g. ORCID) for institutions or research organisations (e.g. ROR).

Access to and sharing of different versions of articles via the journal or repositories must be ensured. Published articles are available on the journal's website, and different versions of articles, in accordance with the terms and manner of the journal's publication (e.g., hybrid model), are also available in institutional repositories (such as. DiRROS) and other trusted repositories (e.g. Zenodo). The full issues of Slovenian scientific journals are also kept as obligatory copies on the portal Slovenian Digital Library – dLib.si, in accordance with Legal deposit act (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, Nos. 69/06 and 86/09). It is sensible that authors are also informed about which other websites can be used to publish an appropriate version of the article.

Permanent digital preservation comprises technical protection, backup and long-term preservation of digital content. The journal should ensure permanent preservation and accessibility of content even in the event of cessation of operations. To this end, it can use repositories that provide conditions for long-term preservation, and the use of specialised services for permanent digital preservation is also recommended (e.g. LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Portico, PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), Internet Archive or other services recognised within relevant international registers or guidelines for digital preservation. The chosen method of digital preservation should be stated on the journal's website.

It is recommended that the journal's website is available in both Slovenian and English.  The information must be identical in both languages.

More information (mostly in English) is available on the following websites:

1. Open Access Journals Toolkit
2. DOAJ’s Basic criteria
3. EIFL guidelines, policies and templates for publishers of diamond open access journals
4. DIAMAS (Diamond Open Access, standard and guidelines)