What is an Article Processing Charge (APC)?
- A one-off payment to cover the costs of publishing and publishing services in gold or hybrid Open Access journals.
- The APC is paid by either the author, the funder, the institution or the employer. The fee is payable when your manuscript is accepted, but before it is published.
- Paying this fee means that your research is open access and available to anyone with an internet connection.
- APC fees vary by journal, and funding may be available.
- The average cost of an APC is approx. €2,000- €2,500 per paper but can be as high as €10,000.
- Check on the Directory of OA Journals for non-APC journals (DOAJ): https://doaj.org/
- Many Open Access journals will offer APC waivers for those in low-income countries and lower middle-income countries. They may also offer discretionary APC waivers on a case-by-case basis.
- Through IReL, a number of deals have been agreed. There are a number of free APCs given to each Irish institution, and these are given on a first come first serve basis. Payment is otherwise not supported by TU Dublin. See the full list of journals covered here.
- Orphan APCs: TU Dublin has an Orphan APC Scheme:
- Apply to the relevant College Head of Research
- Considered by a committee and must plead case
- There is no need to spend money to make your work Open. The DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) lists over 11,000 journals without APCs.
- TU Dublin has an Open Access policy. This document outlines how you are asked to lodge your Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM- the version that has passed through peer-review and has been accepted for publication but without any publishers' branding, formatting) into our Institutional Repository Arrow.
The 2023 allocations of APCs through IReL are now live. This means that if you seek to publish in a journal covered, the APC costs will be covered. [Please note: this is the ONLY way that TU Dublin supports the payment of APCs outside of the Orphan APC Fund].
Please bear some things in mind:
- These APCs are given on a strictly first-come-first-served basis. We cannot hold or reserve any APCs.
- We reserve the right to reject applications where an applicant has already had two APCs approved in the same calendar year.
- Journals (in particular, Society published journals) can leave the agreement periodically. We have had a few instances of academics being stuck with an invoice for an APC because the journal they applied to left the deal. Always double-check!
- You can search the Elsevier Journal Finder for this agreement, which provides details of the journals included. You can also search the full list of eligible journals in all IReL and Irish HEI open access agreements.
- Check out the Author Journey for Elsevier journals.
(NB: Oxford University Press: fully-OA journal allocation already gone, but we have enough hybrid journal allocation for the full year)
(NB: The Springer Nature OA allocation is now fully used up for 2023)
(NB: The IEEE OA allocation is now fully used up for 2023)
(NB: Wiley fully OA allocations have been exhausted for 2023. Hybrid continues to be available, although this may also run out before year end)
(NB: Taylor and Francis (T&F): Fully OA and Hybrid journals - quota exhausted)
(NB: Royal Society of Chemistry: allocation now fully used up)
(NB: Elsevier (Science Direct): allocation now fully used up).
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact aisling.coyne@tudublin.ie.
TU Dublin does not support the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) outside of the IReL consortium negotiated deals. Normally, APCs are paid from a research budget or funding program. However, in exceptional cases, where there is a lone researcher without funding, an application can be made to the Orphan APC Committee.
The process is to fill out the application form, making a case why the university should pay this fee, why there is no other journal option, why there is no other Open Access journal option, a reason why the research needs paid Open Access rather than Green Open Access (which is required of all TU Dublin researchers by policy regardless), and be prepared to defend your argument in front of the Committee. The bar is very high and researchers have been denied.
The Orphan APC Committee does not support the principle of retrospective reimbursement of APC charges in cases where a researcher has paid the fee.
Contact your Faculty Head of Research for further information:
- Faculty of Business: Amr Mahfouz
- Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment: Marek Rebow
- Faculty of Sciences and Health: Anthony Betts
- Faculty of Arts and Tourism: Conor McGarrigle
- Faculty of Computing, Digital and Data: Dympna O'Sullivan