As of 2023, IGI Global successfully transitioned to a gold open access (OA) model within a span of less than two years. This decision was fueled by the growing demand for increased accessibility to research and aligned with the company’s commitment to serving the research community, as well as its collective of more than 200,000 editors, authors, and library professionals. While open access allows for free and immediate access to published research without paywalls or restrictions, the process of publishing open access work incurs certain costs. Publishers invest significant time and resources to ensure the quality and integrity of open access research. This article explains the concept of OA processing charges, their necessity, and provides information on funding options.
What is an OA Processing Charge and Why is it Necessary?
In the traditional subscription-based journal publishing model readers must pay to access published content, and as such, publishers are able to recoup the cost of resources through subscription fees. But open access journals have no paywall, making the content free for anyone who wishes to access it, thus, creating the need for certain measures that publishers must take to ensure that they are able to sustain the publishing process and continue to offer free content to the academic community. And that is why publishers charge an OA processing charge for open access publishing. The fee is meant to help cover the costs of resources expended to publish the open content.The manuscript author(s) or their respective institution or a funding body supporting the journal must pay this cost.
The OA processing charge offsets the costs of all the activities associated with the publication of the manuscript, including:
- High Visibility & Discoverability
- OA Licensing
- OA Compliance
- Online Hosting & Content Distribution
- Archiving
- Content Indexing & Abstracting
- Digital Tools, Systems, & Third-Party Software
- Editorial Support & Services
- Formatting, Layout, & Typesetting
- Promotional Support
When is the OA Processing Charge Due?
The payment of the OA processing charge is not required until AFTER an manuscript has undergone a full double-blind peer review process and has been accepted for publication (authors are not requested to pay an OA processing charge if their work is rejected).
Advantages For Authors
By removing the price barriers to access the work and allowing the work to reach a larger audience, authors have a better likelihood of achieving higher citation impact for their work and also greater potential for future research, development, and collaboration opportunities. The CC BY 4.0 license is applied and therefore the copyright of the published work remains with the authors (so they will have greater flexibility to use the work as they please after publication) and the content is immediately freely accessible to the public upon its release. Others may distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, so long as they credit the author for the original creation. Additionally, open access papers are 2-3 times more likely to be read than non-open access papers, benefit from 89% higher download rates than non-open access papers, and are 47% more likely to be cited than non-open access papers. The benefits are truly endless for the authors of the work.
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OA Processing Charge Funding Options
Institutional Open Access Agreements
- IGI Global offers flexible institutional Open Access Agreements to support institutions' faculty and researchers in garnering higher usage and potential for indexing for their work when publishing under the open access model. IGI Global's options include discounts and funding support for faculty processing charges, as well as support for full open access publications led by faculty. Learn More >
Low- and Middle-Income Countries
- Corresponding authors affiliated to a low- or middle-income country may request a waiver or discount for the Article Processing Charge (APC) should they be unable to secure funding from an alternate body. View list of eligible countries.
Open Access Funds Through Grant Proposals
- There are multiple ways to secure open access funding upfront/prior to submission. One of those ways is to include a section about open access in your research grant proposals. Learn More >
Additional OA Funding Resources
Find below common OA funding resources that provide additional information on country funding, OA standards, and more.
For more information regarding open access publishing, we strongly encourage reading the following article published by Web of Science titled “
A researcher’s complete guide to open access papers”. We also encourage you to contact IGI Global’s Open Access Division at
openaccessadmin@igi-global.com, to learn more about IGI Global’s open access publishing opportunities and for any questions regarding OA processing charges.
About IGI Global
Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA with a subsidiary office (IGI Science and Technology, Ltd.) operating out of Beijing, China, IGI Global is a leading medium-sized independent international academic publisher of scholarly reference sources. They are committed to facilitating the discovery of pioneering scientific research that enhances and expands the body of knowledge available to the research community through traditional and open access publishing workflows. Working in close collaboration with more than 200,000+ expert researchers and professionals from leading institutions, IGI Global publishes quality peer-reviewed content in three major academic subject areas:
Learn more about IGI Global
here.