Open Access 101: How to Pay for OA?

Charges for publishing articles, including costs of publishing in an open access journal, can be included in funding applications as costs of the dissemination of research results.

Charges for OA publishing vary. In order to estimate the costs for your budget, check SHERPA/RoMEO for a list of paid OA options, and also verify the article processing charge on a journal's website.

When choosing to publish in an OA journal, the author or institution may have to pay for publication. These can be referred to as article processing charges (APC) or author processing charges.

For a list of Publishers' paid open access options see SHERPA/RoMEO.

UHN Libraries do not have a fund for open access publishing fees. However author funds or publisher discount agreements may be available to help offset these costs depending on author affiliations.

For UHN affiliates

• Longwoods: TeamUHN can publish Open Access in Longwoods journals with a 25% discount to the OA  publishing fee. The Longwoods Editorial Director will work with the lead author to ensure this discount is applied.

For University of Toronto affiliates

• Open Access Publisher Discounts

For York University affiliates

• York University Libraries OA Author Fund
• York University Libraries also maintain institutional memberships with major OA publishers in order to reduce the cost of Author Processing Fees in these journals, and to streamline the fee payment process.

For Toronto Metropolitan University affiliates

• Article Processing Charge Discounts

Some journal publishers may also have open access funding support services. For example, Springer Nature. When choosing a journal, you may wish to check their open access author information to see if they have any resources to help.