Three Teachings Studies: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism (TTS) is a fully open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Panorama Scholarly Group (PSG). The journal is committed to the immediate and equitable dissemination of research concerning Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and their historical, intellectual, religious, philosophical, and cultural contexts. All published scholarly articles are freely accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges, reader registration requirements, or embargo periods. Authors retain copyright in their original scholarly contributions, and published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), subject to any clearly identified third-party rights. This policy establishes the journal's principles concerning access, reuse, licensing, self-archiving, publication charges, scholarly discovery, and the continuing integrity of the published record.

Principles and Objectives of Open Access

TTS regards open access as an essential means of facilitating scholarly communication, intellectual exchange, and the responsible circulation of academic knowledge across institutional, linguistic, geographical, and disciplinary boundaries.

The journal recognizes that research concerning the Three Teachings involves extensive engagement with historical texts, philosophical traditions, religious communities, artistic practices, cultural transmission, and contemporary academic debates. Broad access to such scholarship supports critical examination, educational use, interdisciplinary research, and scholarly discussion among researchers and readers with different backgrounds and institutional resources.

The journal's open-access model is guided by the following objectives:

• Equitable Access: Provide public access to published scholarly articles without requiring payment or institutional subscriptions.
• Immediate Dissemination: Make accepted and fully prepared articles available upon online publication without an embargo period.
• Responsible Reuse: Enable lawful copying, distribution, translation, adaptation, and further use of licensed scholarship under clearly stated conditions.
• Author Rights: Preserve authors' copyright ownership and support the continued dissemination of their original work.
• Academic Visibility: Improve the accessibility and discoverability of research through accurate bibliographic information and appropriate scholarly dissemination channels.
• Scholarly Integrity: Maintain independent editorial evaluation, research ethics requirements, and appropriate correction of the academic record.
• International Exchange: Facilitate engagement with scholarship across different linguistic, cultural, and intellectual traditions.

Open access is a publication and dissemination principle. It does not replace scholarly evaluation, remove ethical or legal responsibilities, or guarantee particular academic outcomes such as citations, indexing, or research impact.

Immediate Access and Reader Rights

Published scholarly articles in TTS are made available through the journal's official website immediately upon publication. Readers do not need a paid subscription, an institutional affiliation, or an individual account to read and download publicly available articles.

The journal's access arrangements include:

• No Subscription Fees: Readers are not charged subscription or access fees to read published scholarly articles.
• No Reader Registration: Publicly available article content may be accessed without creating an account or logging in.
• No Access Embargo: Full-text scholarly articles are made publicly accessible when they are published online, without a journal-imposed waiting period.
• Free Reading and Downloading: Readers may access, read, download, and retain lawful copies of published articles.
• Search and Linking: Readers, libraries, and scholarly services may search publicly available article information and link to the journal's official publication records.
• Sharing and Further Use: Published articles may be copied, distributed, printed, translated, and adapted in accordance with their applicable licensing terms.

The journal does not distinguish between registered and unregistered readers for ordinary access to published scholarly articles. Account registration is used for author submissions, reviewer assignments, and related editorial functions, rather than as a condition of accessing published research.

Open access does not extend public access to unpublished submissions, confidential peer review reports, protected editorial communications, or restricted personal information. Such materials remain subject to the journal's confidentiality and research ethics requirements.

Creative Commons Licensing

TTS publishes scholarly articles under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This license allows others to share and adapt licensed content without seeking individual permission from the copyright holder, provided that its conditions are satisfied.

Open Access Model: Immediate open access.
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Copyright: Retained by the author or authors.
Redistribution: Permitted under the license.
Commercial Reuse: Permitted under the license.
Translation and Adaptation: Permitted under the license.
Attribution: Required.
Embargo: None.

Subject to the applicable license conditions, users may:

• Copy and redistribute licensed scholarly articles in any medium or format.
• Incorporate licensed material into teaching resources, scholarly collections, educational publications, and other lawful works.
• Translate, annotate, adapt, remix, or otherwise build upon licensed material.
• Share adapted material and derivative scholarship in accordance with the applicable license conditions.
• Reuse licensed content for commercial or noncommercial purposes.
• Redistribute lawful copies of the published article without seeking additional permission for uses already authorized by CC BY 4.0.

These permissions apply to material covered by the license. They do not automatically extend to separately licensed third-party content, protected personal information, or rights that the licensor does not hold.

Official License Overview: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full License Terms: CC BY 4.0 Legal Code

Attribution and Responsible Reuse

Users who share or adapt CC BY 4.0 licensed materials must satisfy the license's attribution requirements. Attribution may be provided in any reasonable manner appropriate to the medium, method, and context of reuse.

Where reasonably practicable, users should:

• Identify the original author or authors and retain relevant attribution information supplied with the work.
• Identify the original scholarly publication, including its article title and the journal where appropriate.
• Provide the article's DOI or official publication link when available and reasonably practicable.
• Identify the CC BY 4.0 license and provide a link or other appropriate reference to its terms.
• Indicate whether the material has been translated, abridged, annotated, modified, or otherwise adapted, and retain relevant previous modification notices.
• Retain applicable copyright, license, and disclaimer notices supplied with the licensed material.
• Avoid suggesting that the original authors, the editorial office, or the publisher endorse the reuse or adaptation without appropriate authorization.

Users must not impose additional legal terms or effective technological restrictions that prevent others from exercising the permissions granted by CC BY 4.0 in the licensed material.

The license does not impose a general requirement that adaptations as a whole be distributed under the same Creative Commons license. However, the obligations associated with material originally licensed under CC BY 4.0 continue to apply to the reused licensed material.

Compliance with open-access licensing and compliance with academic citation ethics are distinct responsibilities. A person may have legal permission to reproduce licensed material while still being required to acknowledge the original work according to applicable scholarly citation standards. Authors submitting manuscripts to TTS must use the journal's mandatory Chicago Notes and Bibliography system.

Copyright Ownership and Publishing Rights

Authors retain copyright in their original scholarly contributions published in TTS. The journal does not require authors to transfer ownership of their copyright to the editorial office or to Panorama Scholarly Group.

Upon acceptance and publication, authors grant the journal the non-exclusive rights necessary to publish, reproduce, distribute, display, and preserve the accepted scholarly work, prepare its official publication files, and maintain appropriate bibliographic and editorial records.

These rights enable the journal to make articles accessible through its official website, maintain and distribute relevant publication metadata, facilitate lawful scholarly dissemination, and administer necessary corrections or other publication notices.

Authors remain entitled to exercise the rights they own and may authorize additional lawful non-exclusive uses of their original work. Such arrangements must respect any existing copyright obligations, rights belonging to co-authors or third parties, and permissions previously granted under CC BY 4.0.

Detailed information concerning rights ownership, non-exclusive publishing authorization, legal permissions, and third-party content is provided in the journal's Copyright & Licensing Policy.

Author Self-Archiving and Repository Deposits

TTS supports the immediate lawful sharing and self-archiving of its published scholarly articles. Authors may deposit the final published version of their articles in personal, institutional, disciplinary, and other appropriate repositories or scholarly platforms.

Authors may:

• Deposit the Published Version: Archive the final version of record in institutional or disciplinary repositories immediately after publication.
• Share on Academic Websites: Make the published article available through personal or institutional academic websites and appropriate research networks.
• Distribute to Readers: Share the published article with colleagues, students, academic institutions, and members of the public.
• Use in Teaching: Incorporate licensed material into lectures, seminars, course materials, and other educational activities.
• Reuse in Later Scholarship: Develop subsequent scholarly work using their original published contributions, subject to appropriate attribution and publication ethics requirements.

No embargo period applies to self-archiving of the final published version. Authors do not need to obtain additional journal permission to deposit that version where the intended use is permitted by the applicable license and relevant third-party rights.

Authors are encouraged to include the article's official citation, publication date, DOI where assigned, journal URL, and CC BY 4.0 license information when creating repository records or distributing the published version.

The journal's open-access license for the published version does not automatically determine the rights or licensing arrangements associated with earlier unpublished drafts, submitted manuscripts, confidential review files, or materials belonging to other rights holders.

Third-Party Content and Separate Rights

The open-access license attached to an article does not automatically extend to all materials reproduced within it. Authors must identify and appropriately handle content owned by other rights holders or subject to separate legal conditions.

Third-party materials may include:

• Photographs, illustrations, maps, diagrams, and previously published figures.
• Manuscript facsimiles, archival documents, inscriptions, and images held by libraries, archives, or museums.
• Modern translations, critical editions, editorial annotations, and substantial copyrighted textual excerpts.
• Musical scores, arrangements, recordings, audiovisual materials, and performance documentation.
• Research materials governed by confidentiality obligations, privacy rights, contractual access conditions, or other applicable restrictions.

Authors are responsible for securing necessary permissions where required or establishing that the intended use is authorized by an applicable license, public-domain status, statutory exception, or another lawful basis.

Materials excluded from the article's CC BY 4.0 license should be clearly identified through appropriate captions, credit lines, or rights statements. Readers must observe any separate permissions or restrictions applicable to such materials.

In particular, the age of a classical work does not automatically establish the copyright status of every modern translation, critical edition, photograph, transcription, or reproduction derived from it. Authors and subsequent users must distinguish the rights associated with an original historical source from those associated with later intellectual or creative contributions.

Supplementary Materials and Research Data

TTS welcomes appropriate supplementary materials that improve the transparency, interpretability, and scholarly value of published research. Such materials may include textual appendices, translations, archival descriptions, manuscript comparisons, images, tables, datasets, musical examples, and other research documentation.

Authors are encouraged to make supporting research materials accessible where doing so is academically useful, ethically appropriate, legally permissible, and consistent with the rights of relevant individuals and institutions.

When supplementary materials are provided, authors should:

• Identify the source and nature of the materials accurately.
• Explain their relevance to the published scholarly contribution.
• Clarify the applicable copyright or licensing arrangements where necessary.
• Respect confidentiality, informed consent, archival restrictions, and relevant cultural or community obligations.
• Avoid disclosing protected personal information, confidential fieldwork records, or other restricted material without a lawful and appropriate basis.

TTS does not impose a universal public data-deposit requirement on all scholarly contributions. The suitability of data sharing depends on the nature of the research, including limitations associated with historical sources, restricted collections, human participants, religious communities, and intellectual property rights.

Supplementary files may carry separate licenses or rights statements. Publication of an article under CC BY 4.0 does not automatically establish that every associated dataset, recording, software file, or separately deposited third-party resource may be reused under identical conditions.

Multilingual Access and International Scholarly Communication

TTS accepts scholarly manuscripts in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. The journal's multilingual publication policy recognizes the importance of original-language scholarship and facilitates academic participation across different intellectual and cultural communities.

Manuscripts written in languages other than English must provide an English title and abstract to support international scholarly communication and accurate publication metadata.

Open access applies to published articles regardless of the language in which they are written. The journal does not restrict reader access according to a publication's language or an individual's institutional affiliation.

The CC BY 4.0 license permits lawful translation and adaptation of licensed articles, subject to attribution and identification of changes. Users preparing translations must distinguish their own interpretive decisions from the original authors' work and respect any separately protected materials.

TTS does not guarantee that every article will be translated into every accepted publication language. The journal encourages accurate multilingual communication while retaining the integrity of the original scholarly publication and its bibliographic record.

Article Processing Charges and Open-Access Funding

TTS follows an open-access publishing model supported by the publisher's publishing infrastructure and applicable Article Processing Charges (APCs). Publication charges contribute to the costs of editorial administration, manuscript processing, copyediting, typesetting, digital dissemination, publication metadata, and the maintenance of scholarly publishing services.

The principal financial arrangements are:

APCs are assessed only after formal acceptance for publication. They are not charged as a condition of submitting a manuscript, receiving editorial screening, or obtaining peer review.

Eligible authors may apply for partial or full APC waivers in accordance with the journal's published policy. Waiver requests are evaluated individually and must not affect scholarly editorial decisions.

The same open-access and CC BY 4.0 licensing conditions apply to published scholarly articles regardless of whether an author pays the standard APC, receives an approved reduction or waiver, or qualifies for a fee exemption. Readers are not charged for access to articles on the basis of authors' payment status.

Detailed information is provided in the Article Processing Charges Policy.

Editorial Independence and Scholarly Quality

Open-access publication does not reduce or replace the journal's scholarly evaluation requirements. Manuscripts remain subject to the applicable editorial, peer review, originality, and publication ethics standards.

Research Articles ordinarily undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent external reviewers. Other scholarly contributions may receive editorial assessment or specialist evaluation according to their content and publication category.

The journal maintains the following safeguards:

• Editorial decisions must be based on scholarly quality, originality, evidentiary reliability, relevance, and ethical compliance.
• Publication charges and authors' financial circumstances must not determine acceptance or rejection.
• Reviewers and editors must maintain appropriate independence, confidentiality, and conflict-of-interest safeguards.
• Manuscripts must satisfy the journal's source attribution, citation, authorship, and research integrity requirements.
• A request for revision, payment of an APC, or approval of a waiver does not guarantee publication.
• Published articles remain subject to appropriate post-publication examination, correction, and ethical oversight.

Further information is available in the Peer Review Policy and Publication Ethics Policy.

Bibliographic Metadata, DOI, and Scholarly Discovery

TTS maintains bibliographic information for published scholarly articles to support citation, identification, academic discovery, and the accurate presentation of its publication record.

Article metadata may include:

• Article titles, author names, and relevant institutional information.
• Abstracts, keywords, languages, and scholarly subject information.
• Publication dates, annual volume information, and other relevant bibliographic details.
• Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) where assigned and registered.
• Article references, official publication links, and relevant licensing information.
• Necessary corrections, retraction notices, or other publication status information where applicable.

The journal may make appropriate publication metadata accessible through supported scholarly discovery mechanisms, repositories, bibliographic services, and research infrastructure.

Authors and readers should use the official article publication record as the primary reference for the article's citation information, publication status, and DOI where applicable.

An ISSN, a DOI, open-access publication, or the availability of bibliographic metadata does not guarantee inclusion in any particular indexing database. Decisions concerning indexing, journal evaluation, coverage, and related services are determined independently by the relevant organizations.

Digital Accessibility and Preservation

TTS seeks to maintain continuing access to its published scholarly record through its official online publication environment and appropriate digital publishing practices.

The journal's publication administration includes the maintenance of article records, publicly available publication files, relevant metadata, and the information necessary to identify and cite published scholarly contributions.

The journal supports appropriate digital preservation arrangements, lawful repository deposits, and author self-archiving as complementary means of maintaining the accessibility of scholarly research.

Authors are encouraged to deposit the final published version of their articles in institutional or subject repositories where suitable and to retain accurate citation and licensing information. Such deposits may improve dissemination and provide additional access pathways outside the journal's primary website.

DOI registration and metadata availability should not be confused with a separately verified long-term preservation service. Specific memberships, archival agreements, repository arrangements, or preservation certifications should be considered confirmed only where they are expressly identified in the journal's official documentation.

Although the journal is committed to continuing access, uninterrupted availability of every external website, repository, or technical service cannot be guaranteed. TTS seeks to manage its digital publication records responsibly and to communicate material changes affecting the availability or integrity of published research where appropriate.

Research Funder and Institutional Open-Access Requirements

TTS supports the general objectives of research funders and academic institutions that promote immediate access to publicly disseminated scholarly research, transparent licensing, and responsible sharing of research outputs.

The journal's immediate open-access model, author-retained copyright policy, CC BY 4.0 licensing, and lack of a self-archiving embargo may assist authors in meeting applicable funding and institutional requirements.

Authors should independently verify any relevant requirements concerning:

• Acceptable open-access licenses.
• Repository selection and deposit deadlines.
• Research funding acknowledgments and publication reporting.
• Research data management and supporting material accessibility.
• Bibliographic identifiers, publication metadata, and other funder-specific conditions.

The journal does not represent that publication automatically satisfies every funding agency's or institution's individual compliance requirements. Authors remain responsible for confirming the requirements applicable to their grants, affiliations, and research projects.

Corrections, Retractions, and the Open Scholarly Record

The journal's commitment to open access includes the responsible maintenance of the scholarly record after publication. Where material errors, research integrity concerns, or other significant issues are identified, TTS may issue corrections, clarifications, expressions of concern, retractions, or other appropriate notices.

Such actions are intended to inform readers of the status and reliability of published research. They do not automatically transfer copyright ownership or invalidate permissions previously granted to compliant users under CC BY 4.0.

A valid CC BY 4.0 license cannot be unilaterally revoked from recipients who continue to comply with its terms. Retraction may change the scholarly status of an article, but it does not, by itself, revoke an otherwise valid license. Exceptional issues involving unlawfully licensed material, privacy, safety, or third-party rights may require separate consideration.

Corrections and retraction notices should ordinarily remain identifiable through the relevant publication record. The journal does not regard silent deletion as an appropriate routine substitute for transparent correction of academic literature.

Post-publication procedures are governed by the journal's Publication Ethics Policy.

Responsible Use of Open-Access Research

TTS encourages the lawful and responsible use of its published research for academic study, teaching, public education, interdisciplinary inquiry, and further scholarly development.

Users should distinguish the legal permissions available under open-access licensing from the ethical standards governing research interpretation, attribution, historical accuracy, and scholarly communication.

Responsible reuse includes:

• Accurate acknowledgment of the original research and its authors.
• Clear identification of translations, adaptations, excerpts, and other modifications.
• Appropriate consideration of the scholarly context of quotations, arguments, and findings.
• Respect for separate rights associated with images, recordings, manuscripts, translations, and restricted research materials.
• Avoidance of false attribution, misleading endorsement claims, fabricated citations, or deliberate distortion of the original work.
• Accurate representation of any published corrections, expressions of concern, or retraction notices relevant to the material being cited or reused.

The journal does not impose additional restrictions on lawful commercial reuse, translation, or scholarly criticism beyond those arising from the applicable license and other relevant rights. Its commitment to academic integrity operates alongside, rather than as an attempt to narrow, the permissions granted by CC BY 4.0.

Related Policies and Further Guidance

The following journal policies provide additional information about publication rights, scholarly evaluation, author responsibilities, and related administrative requirements:

• Copyright & Licensing — Copyright ownership, non-exclusive publishing rights, permissions, and author self-archiving.
• Article Processing Charges — Applicable publication charges, exemptions, and waiver arrangements.
• Publication Ethics — Research integrity, editorial independence, complaints, corrections, and retractions.
• Author Ethical Responsibilities — Attribution, originality, permissions, and author accountability.
• Peer Review Policy — Scholarly evaluation and the independence of editorial decisions.
• Publication Information — Official journal identification, publisher information, and publication arrangements.
• Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International — Official summary of CC BY 4.0 permissions and conditions.

The official Creative Commons legal code governs the interpretation of CC BY 4.0. This policy summarizes the journal's open-access arrangements and should not be interpreted as modifying, expanding, or restricting the rights granted by the license itself.

Editorial Contact and Open-Access Inquiries

Authors, readers, librarians, repository administrators, and other interested parties may contact the editorial office regarding access to published articles, licensing conditions, repository deposits, third-party rights, publication charges, bibliographic information, or related policy questions.

Formal manuscripts and revised submissions must be submitted through the journal's official online submission system. Account registration is not required for readers seeking access to published scholarly articles.

Submission Guidelines: View Submission Requirements

Author Registration: Create an Author Account

Online Submission System: Access the Journal's Submission System