When selecting and signing a license in Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment, authors will be presented with specific license options. These options may differ depending on a number of factors, such as funding requirements or journal specific policies. For more information on the types of licenses available, please see What types of licenses are there available in the Sage Open Access Portal?

Why can I not see a certain license type in Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment?

Funding requirements 

If an article is linked to an Open Access agreement or funder that mandates a particular Creative Commons license, the options presented at the license selection stage will be limited to compliant license types only. 

For example, some approved funding organizations may require authors to select the CC.BY license exclusively when proceeding through Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment. If you have not been offered a CC.BY license and your funder or institution requires it, please email Open Access Customer Service at [email protected] to request this license type. When emailing the team, please include information about your funder or institutional requirements for publishing under a CC.BY license. This will help us assess your request. Please note that all requests will be individually assessed by Sage, and we cannot guarantee that a CC.BY license will be granted. 

Journal Policies

Certain journals are restrictive on the Creative Commons license types that they offer. Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment is designed to ensure consistency and compliance with the journal's policies and guidelines regarding copyright and open access. As a result, authors may find that only certain license choices are available to them when publishing their work in certain journals. To find out more information about a specific journal, please visit the Sage Journals platform, search for the journal title and go to the Submission guidelines. 

Clash in requirements 

In rare instances, authors may encounter situations where no license options are available for selection in Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment. This typically occurs when there is a conflict in the rules set by the journal and Open Access agreement/funder. If this occurs, please contact the Open Access Customer Services team at [email protected] and we will assess each scenario on a case-by-case basis. 

Contact Information

For further assistance, contact the Sage Open Access Customer Services team at [email protected].