Article Processing Charges and Publication Fees
An article processing charge (APC) is a fee that publishers charge authors in order to publish an article open access. This fee is sometimes called an Author Processing Charge or an Article Processing Fee.
The Library is aware of the challenge that researchers face when publishers require APCs to publish openly, but we cannot support paying these fees for a few different reasons:
Learn more:
Pinfield, S., Salter, J. and Bath, P.A. (2016) The 'total cost of publication' in a hybrid open-access environment: Institutional approaches to funding journal article-processing charges in combination with subscriptions. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (7). pp. 1751-1766. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23446
Thomas Shafee, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Finding APC Support
Researchers often pursue funding for OA through:
There are also ways of making research publicly accessible that do not require paying any fees at all, including using scholarly communication tools like Sherpa Romeo to determine journal sharing policies. Sherpa Romeo compiles and summarizes journal policies making it easier for authors to understand what versions of their work that they can freely share (i.e., original submission, peer-reviewed version, publisher's version) and in what locations they can share that work (ArXiv, UDSpace, disciplinary repositories, etc.). Many times researchers can share specific versions of their work for free in specific locations. This is called self-archiving or green open access. Learn more about green open access here and using Sherpa Romeo here.
Learn more:
Book a consultation with our Digital Publishing and Copyright Librarian, Paige Morgan, to learn more about making your research and publications discoverable to wider audiences without paying APCs.
Read and Publish Agreements
A Read and Publish agreement, also known as a transformative agreement, is an agreement between an institution and a publisher. Under the agreement, the institution pays an amount to the publisher for access to its journals. In return, the publisher allows researchers from the institution to publish articles in those journals without any costs to the researchers, like article processing charges, or open access fees.
Cambridge University Press
If you are affiliated with the University of Delaware (or another participating institution), you can publish articles Open Access, at no cost to you, in any of Cambridge University Press's participating journals, at least through 2024.
To be eligible, articles must:
For more information, please visit here.
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
APCs are covered for all hybrid RSC journals. Authors also receive a 15% discount on APCs for gold OA RSC journals. For more information, please visit here.
Springer Nature
Corresponding authors affiliated with UD (or another participating institution within Lyrasis) will have APCs waived when they publish in any of Springer Nature’s hybrid journals. For more information, please visit here.
Publishing Fee Discounts
UD authors may get a discount on publishing open access with the following publishers: