All scholarly content published by AACC is openly accessible immediately upon publication as the Version of Record. Readers may read, download, copy, share, and reuse published material in accordance with the license applicable to each article, without payment, institutional subscription, geographic restriction, or mandatory registration. AACC does not operate a delayed-access model and does not impose an embargo between formal publication and public access. Open access does not alter the journal's requirements for peer review, editorial assessment, publication ethics, scientific reporting, or production quality.

Authors retain copyright in their published work. Copyright is not transferred to AACC, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, or Treata Scholars as a condition of publication. By agreeing to publication, authors grant AACC a non-exclusive right of first publication together with the rights reasonably necessary to publish, distribute, preserve, identify, and maintain the Version of Record and its associated bibliographic metadata. The copyright holder and applicable license are displayed with the published article.

Unless specifically stated otherwise, articles published by AACC are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license permits users to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original author or authors, the original publication is identified, a link to the license is provided, and any modifications are indicated.

Reuse must not imply endorsement by the authors, AACC, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, or Treata Scholars. Users may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from exercising rights already permitted by the license. Uses primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation are outside the permissions automatically granted by CC BY-NC 4.0 and may require additional authorization from the applicable copyright or rights holder.

The full license terms are available from Creative Commons: CC BY-NC 4.0 International.

Reuse of AACC content should provide reasonable attribution to the original scholarly work. A suitable attribution should normally identify the author or authors, article title, journal title, publication year and volume, article number where applicable, DOI or permanent article link, and the applicable Creative Commons license.

A typical attribution may follow the form:

Author(s). Article title. Archives of Academic Critical Care. Year;Volume:Article Number. DOI. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Where material has been modified, translated, adapted, or otherwise transformed, the nature of the modification should be indicated clearly. Attribution must not be presented in a manner that suggests endorsement of the user, the reuse, or any derivative work by the authors or journal.

The CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits reuse that is not primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. Non-commercial scholarly, educational, repository, and academic uses may therefore proceed without separate permission from AACC when they comply with the license conditions.

Where a proposed use falls outside the scope of the license, including commercial reuse requiring additional authorization, permission must be obtained from the applicable copyright or rights holder. Nothing in the Creative Commons license limits rights that users may independently have under applicable copyright exceptions, limitations, or other provisions of law.

The Creative Commons license attached to an AACC article does not automatically apply to third-party material included in that article when a separate copyright, permission, or licensing statement is provided. Figures, photographs, tables, illustrations, questionnaires, instruments, maps, datasets, or other material reproduced from external sources may remain subject to rights established by the original copyright holder.

Authors are responsible for obtaining appropriate permission for third-party material when permission is legally required and for providing accurate attribution and credit information. Users wishing to reuse third-party material must follow the licensing or copyright statement accompanying that material and obtain authorization directly from the relevant rights holder when necessary.

AACC permits immediate self-archiving of the published Version of Record without embargo. Authors may deposit the published article in institutional repositories, subject repositories, university or research-center repositories, personal academic websites, and other appropriate non-commercial scholarly platforms.

Deposited copies should retain the bibliographic identity of the Version of Record, include an appropriate citation to the original AACC publication, provide the DOI or permanent journal link where available, and retain the applicable copyright and CC BY-NC 4.0 licensing information. Repository deposit does not create a separate Version of Record and should not obscure the identity of the formally published AACC article.

Authors may also retain or share appropriate earlier manuscript versions in accordance with the journal's preprint and repository policies. Once the Version of Record is available, earlier records should, where possible, be updated with the final citation and link to the published article.

Submission and manuscript-preparation requirements are available in the Instructions for Authors.

Posting a manuscript on a recognized scholarly preprint server before submission does not, by itself, prevent consideration by AACC. Authors should disclose the existence of relevant preprints during submission and provide the corresponding identifier or link when applicable.

Following publication, authors are encouraged to update the preprint record with the complete citation, DOI, and link to the AACC Version of Record. Preprint posting remains subject to applicable requirements concerning research ethics, participant confidentiality, copyright, legal restrictions, and contractual obligations.

Related originality and prior-dissemination requirements are described in the journal's Editorial and Publication Policies.

AACC supports lawful indexing, repository deposit, archiving, scholarly discovery, and machine-assisted access to its open-access content in accordance with the applicable license, legal requirements, and technical infrastructure. Journal content and bibliographic metadata may be harvested, indexed, or deposited by scholarly databases, repositories, discovery services, preservation systems, library systems, and other academic infrastructure where technically and legally permitted.

Distribution or harvesting of metadata does not alter the copyright, licensing status, citation, DOI, or bibliographic identity of the Version of Record. Further information concerning DOI, indexing, metadata, discovery, and preservation infrastructure is provided in the Discoverability and Preservation section.

Open access at AACC is not dependent on payment by authors. The journal currently operates as a no-fee open-access journal and does not charge submission fees, article processing charges (APCs), publication fees, page charges, or mandatory color-figure charges.

No payment is required for editorial assessment, peer review, acceptance, or publication under the journal's current financial model, and authors' financial circumstances do not influence editorial decision-making. Because AACC currently charges no author fees, no APC waiver or discount mechanism is required.

If the journal's fee model changes materially in the future, applicable charges, conditions, and effective dates will be disclosed clearly before they apply to new submissions. Newly introduced charges will not be applied retrospectively to manuscripts already submitted under the published no-fee policy. Related provisions on advertising, commercial influence, and publication fees are available in the Editorial and Publication Policies.

AACC displays copyright and licensing information with each published article and, where technically supported, on both the article landing page and full-text publication files. The standard statement is:

© The Author(s). Published by Archives of Academic Critical Care (AACC). This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Copyright and licensing information forms part of the publication record and should remain associated with redistributed copies of the article.

Uses already permitted under CC BY-NC 4.0 do not require separate permission from AACC. For uses outside the scope of the applicable license, including commercial reuse requiring additional authorization, permission must be obtained from the appropriate copyright or rights holder.

AACC may be contacted for clarification concerning journal licensing or rights statements but does not grant rights that it does not hold. Requests involving third-party material must be directed to the relevant third-party rights holder when appropriate.

Questions concerning journal licensing or permissions may also be directed to the Editorial Office.

AACC's open-access model is independent of editorial decision-making. Decisions regarding initial assessment, external peer review, revision, acceptance, or rejection are based on scientific merit, methodological quality, ethical integrity, reporting standards, relevance, and scholarly contribution and are not influenced by financial support, institutional relationships, sponsorship, or an author's ability to pay.

The absence of author fees does not modify the journal's requirements for peer review, publication ethics, research integrity, scientific reporting, or production quality.

The journal's broader framework for editorial independence is described in Journal Governance.

Corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, and other formal post-publication notices form part of the scholarly record and remain openly accessible. These notices are linked to the affected Version of Record and carry appropriate copyright and licensing information according to the nature of the publication.

Open access does not permit the scholarly record to be altered silently. Material post-publication changes are handled under the journal's Editorial and Publication Policies.

AACC may update its open-access, copyright, licensing, permissions, or self-archiving policies as legal requirements and standards in scholarly publishing evolve. Material changes will be disclosed transparently on the journal website. Changes to future licensing arrangements do not retroactively alter the license under which previously published material was released unless such a change is legally valid and explicitly documented.

Related editorial and publication policies are maintained in the journal's Editorial and Publication Policies.