animal is an open access journal with no subscription charges. This means that authors who publish in animal can make their research work immediately, permanently, and freely accessible worldwide. animal authors will pay an article publishing charge (APC). 

All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License. The advantage of a Creative Commons Licence is that all articles published in the journal will be freely available to users to view, download and share.

Authors will be required to sign a Creative Commons Licence instead of transferring their copyright. They will be offered a choice of either a CC BY license (which extends options for reuse of the article, such as allowing for alterations and revisions to the article and reuse by commercial entities) or a CC BY-NC-ND license (which restricts reuse of the articles to non-commercial purposes and does not permit distribution of the article if it is changed or edited in any way).

Rigorous peer review will continue to guarantee the quality of the research published, with no change in editorial standards or rejection rates.