Open-access publishing proposes a relatively new model for scholarly journal publishing that provides worldwide, barrier-free access to the full text of all published articles. Open access allows all interested readers to view, download, print, and redistribute any article without a subscription, enabling far greater distribution of an author's work than the traditional subscription-based publishing model.

In an open-access model, the publication cost of an article is paid from the author's research budget or by their supporting institution. Al-Rafidain Engineering Journal (AREJ) is an open-access journal; therefore, publishing an article in this journal is FREE (NO Article Publication Fees) for non-Iraqi authors and (100.000) Iraqi dinars for authors inside Iraq for an accepted manuscript to be published. There are no other fees required for submission or processing.