Smart: Journal of Islamic Religion and Sharia Studies (SSharia) is firmly committed to the principles of open scientific exchange and the democratization of knowledge. We operate as a fully Open Access journal, ensuring that all published scholarship is immediately, permanently, and freely available to a global audience.

I. Definition of Open Access

SSharia provides immediate open access to its content on the foundational principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The journal strictly adheres to the definition of Open Access established by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).

II. User Rights and Permissions

In accordance with the BOAI definition, "open access" means that users are freely permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of all articles published in this journal. Users may also crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose without asking prior financial, legal, or technical permission from the publisher or the author.

The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

III. Access and Licensing

• No Paywalls or Subscription Fees: There are no subscription fees, pay-per-view charges, or embargo periods for readers or their institutions. All published articles are available in full-text formats immediately upon online publication.

• Open License: As detailed in our Copyright Policy, all content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). This ensures that the research can be maximally utilized and built upon by the academic community, provided appropriate credit is given and derivative works are shared under identical terms.

IV. Self-Archiving Policy

To further support open access and the long-term visibility of scholarly research, SSharia strongly encourages authors to self-archive their work. Authors are explicitly permitted to post the final, published version of their article (the publisher's formatted PDF) on personal websites, institutional repositories, funding agency archives, and academic social networks (such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu) immediately following publication.

When self-archiving, authors must clearly cite the original publication in SSharia and provide a direct link to the article's official Digital Object Identifier (DOI) on the journal's website.