Food Systems, Safety & Sustainability (FSSS) is a fully open-access journal. All articles are made freely and permanently available online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges, registration requirements, paywalls, or embargo periods.

The journal follows the gold open-access publishing model. Readers may access, download, read, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, and otherwise use published content in accordance with the applicable open-access licence.

Open-Access Licence

Unless otherwise stated, articles published in FSSS are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).

Under this licence, users may:

• copy and redistribute the published material in any medium or format;
• adapt, transform, translate, and build upon the material;
• use the material for academic, educational, professional, commercial, or other lawful purposes; and
• deposit and share the published version through repositories, websites, databases, and other platforms.

Reuse is permitted provided that users:

• give appropriate credit to the author or authors and the journal;
• provide a reference or link to the applicable Creative Commons licence;
• identify whether changes have been made; and
• do not imply endorsement by the authors, editors, journal, or publisher.

Additional information about the CC BY 4.0 licence is available at Creative Commons.

Copyright

Authors retain copyright in their published work. By submitting an accepted manuscript for publication, authors grant the journal and Panorama Scholarly Group the non-exclusive right to publish, distribute, identify, preserve, and make the Version of Record publicly available.

The journal does not require authors to transfer copyright to the publisher. Copyright ownership, licensing conditions, and publication rights are governed by the journal’s Copyright and Licensing Policy.

Immediate and Permanent Access

The Version of Record is made openly available immediately after publication. The journal does not impose an access embargo on published articles.

Published content is intended to remain permanently accessible through the journal website and the journal’s designated digital preservation and archiving arrangements.

Author Sharing and Repository Deposit

Authors may share and deposit the published Version of Record in institutional repositories, disciplinary repositories, personal academic websites, research profiles, funding-agency repositories, and other lawful platforms, provided that the original publication is properly cited and the terms of the applicable licence are observed.

Authors are encouraged to include the article title, complete citation, digital object identifier (DOI), journal name, publisher, and licence information when depositing or sharing their work.

Third-Party Material

Material supplied by third parties, including certain images, figures, datasets, instruments, maps, photographs, or other copyrighted content, may not always be covered by the article’s Creative Commons licence.

Authors are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions before publication and for clearly identifying any material that is subject to separate copyright or licensing restrictions. Users wishing to reuse excluded material must obtain permission directly from the relevant copyright holder.

Article Processing Charges

Open access means that readers are not charged to access published content. Where an Article Processing Charge or another author-side publication fee applies, the amount, payment conditions, waiver arrangements, and applicable exemptions are disclosed separately on the journal website before submission.

Payment of an Article Processing Charge does not guarantee acceptance and has no influence on peer review, editorial assessment, or publication decisions. Editorial decisions are based exclusively on scholarly quality, methodological soundness, research integrity, relevance to the journal’s scope, and compliance with applicable editorial policies.

Access and Reuse Principles

FSSS supports the broad dissemination and responsible reuse of scholarly knowledge. The journal’s open-access policy is intended to facilitate research communication, education, evidence-based policy, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the practical application of research concerning food systems, food safety, and sustainability.

Published content may be reused only in ways consistent with applicable law, research integrity, proper attribution, and the terms of the relevant licence. Misrepresentation, plagiarism, falsification, misleading attribution, or other improper use of published material is not permitted.