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Open Access

This page contains information about Article Processing Charges (APC), where to find funding for APCs, and how to find out more information about sharing work openly without paying APCs.

Article Processing Charges (APC)

Article Processing Charges and Publication Fees

An article processing charge (APC) is a fee that publishers charge authors to publish an article open access. This fee is sometimes called an Article Processing Fee or Open Access Publication Fee.
This is an image of a bar chart that displays the distribution of article processing fees (APCs) in US dollars among Open Access (OA) journals. The x-axis represents the range of article processing fees in increments of 250 US dollars, starting from 250 and ending with ">3000". The y-axis represents the number of OA journals, ranging from 0 to 400 in increments of 100. The highest bar, representing over 300 journals, is in the 250 US dollar range. There is a significant drop for the 500 US dollar range, with around 150 journals. The number of journals gradually increases and fluctuates in the middle ranges (750 to 2000 US dollars), with peaks around 100 to 150 journals. A notable peak is seen again at the 2000 US dollar range with about 200 journals. The number of journals decreases sharply for fees higher than 2250 US dollars, with the lowest bars observed in the 2750, 3000, and >3000 US dollar ranges, each having fewer than 50 journals. The chart indicates that a substantial number of OA journals charge relatively low article processing fees, with fewer journals charging higher fees.

We know that APC fees can be a significant challenge for researchers looking to publish their research openly, but we cannot support paying these fees for a few different reasons:

  • The Library budget does not currently have funding to cover individual article processing charges
  • The Library is already paying for access to these journals in many cases, so if the Library paid APCs as well, we'd be paying some journal twice, once for access and once for each publication. Learn more about this publisher behavior known as double dipping
  • In most cases, paying for APCs does not get us closer to open access structurally

However, the Library does support open access publishing in other ways. When possible, the Library enters OA agreements with publishers. With these agreements, the Library does not pay individual APC fees or APC fees for specific articles. The Library pays one amount as part of the agreement, which in turn offers unlimited OA publishing. Learn more about OA agreements on the agreements page in this guide or by visiting our Agreements and Discounts webpage.

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

APC Funding

Finding APC Support

Researchers often pursue funding for OA through:

There are also ways of making research publicly accessible that do not require any fees. This includes using scholarly communication tools like Open policy finder to determine journal-sharing policies. Open policy finder compiles and summarizes journal policies, empowering authors to understand what versions of their work 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.). Researchers can often share specific versions of their work openly, for free, in particular locations. This practice is known as self-archiving or green open access. Learn more about green open access and using Open policy finder.

Learn more:

Book a consultation with Paige Morgan, our Digital Publishing and Copyright Librarian, to learn more about making your research and publications discoverable to wider audiences without paying APCs.