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OPal logo: a red-to-blue rainbow shaded simple rendering of a regular echinoid with lines of paired white dots representing the ambulacra and a central white circle representing the periproct. The OPal echinoid forms the "O" of the journal's abbreviation, "OPal", with the "Pal" written in light blue.

Open Palaeontology’s Mission Statement: To provide a flexible platform for quality palaeontological research that is free and accessible to authors and readers everywhere. 

Scope

Open Palaeontology (ISSN: 3042-657X) is an international, diamond open access journal promoting open science in palaeontology. The journal accepts research on widely applicable advances within the field in knowledge or methodology, and regional case studies of broader interest to the palaeontological community.

We welcome the submission of articles on any topic related to palaeontological research. This includes, but is not limited to, taxonomic descriptions of new fossil taxa, palaeobiology, palaeoecology, taphonomy, palaeontology database creation, biostratigraphy, micropalaeontology, palaeobotany, education in palaeontology, and the societal applications of palaeontological research. In addition to traditional research articles on palaeontological topics, we publish scientifically sound hypothesis articles, explanations of new methods, presentations of new coding packages (e.g., R, Python), and field research studies. Please get in touch with the Editorial Board or Steering Committee if you are unsure whether your submission is within the scope of Open Palaeontology.

Open access statement

Open Palaeontology is a diamond open access journal, which means it is free to publish in and free to access for all. There is thereby no article publishing charges for submission or publication, and no fee to read published content.

Copyright

All contributions will be published in Open Palaeontology with a CC-BY 4.0 licence. This means that all content is freely available to download, save, reproduce, and transmit for any purpose. Please note that reproduction and transmission of journal content should always credit the author and original source.

Authors retain copyright for contributions published in Open Palaeontology.

Publisher

Open Palaeontology is published by the Institute of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, at the University of Lausanne. The publisher can be contacted at:
Bâtiment Géopolis - 2351
Quartier Mouline
1015 Lausanne
Switzerland
+41 21 692 43 01
bibliost@unil.ch

Open Palaeontology is hosted and supported by the Shared Open Access Publishing Platform (SOAP2), as part of a consortium of universities in Switzerland and sponsored by swissuniversities. The publishing platform used is a customised version of the Open Journal Systems (OJS), which is open source. The journal gratefully thanks the SOAP2 team for their support, hosting, and assistance with the creation and maintenance of Open Palaeontology, without whom the publication of this diamond open access journal would not be possible.

Archiving

Open Palaeontology and SOAP2 ensure long-term availability of its contents. Articles published are automatically archived with PORTICO. 

The journal also encourages self-archiving of contributions after publication by authors in open access repositories of their choice. This can be the submitted, accepted, or published version of submissions of any type.