Open Access Policy

The China Journal of General Surgery (CJGS) is an Open Access journal where all articles, once published, are immediately and permanently available for readers to freely read and download. Since 2004, all journal articles have been digitally archived and can be searched and downloaded from the journal website. All information has also been backed up in the editorial office to ensure data security. Before 2004, the hard and soft copies of each journal issue had been kept in the editorial office for archiving. In addition, other relevant materials are also kept by the editorial office, such as supplementary information and forms provided by the authors. To provide open access, CJGS has an open access fee (also known as an Article Processing Charge, APC) which needs to be paid by the authors or by their research funder or institution.

The CJGS uses the Creative Commons license to allow third-party users to copy and distribute the work in any medium or format under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, as long as they comply with the following license terms: appropriate attribution must be given, a link to the license agreement must be provided, and it must be indicated whether any modifications were made to the original work. Any reasonable method of attribution is acceptable, but the licensor must not be implied to endorse the use of the work. The work cannot be used for commercial purposes. If the work is remixed, transformed, or used as a basis for creating new works, the modified work cannot be distributed.

When submitting a manuscript, authors are required to sign a "Copyright Transfer Agreement" with the editorial department, transferring the copyright to the CJGS. By signing the agreement, authors grant the exclusive license to use the copyright of the article to the editorial department of the CJGS free of charge. The editorial department has proprietary rights, including but not limited to compilation rights, distribution rights, reproduction rights, translation rights, and information network dissemination rights for all or part of the content of the article. The editorial department has the authority to license domestic and foreign literature retrieval systems, network, and database systems to index and include the article. They also have the right to publish and use the article through various media, platforms, and in other languages. Third parties and authors have the right to share and use articles published in the CJGS according to the CC BY-NC-ND license.

For more details about the Creative Commons license, please visit:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.