The University of Alberta aims to grow Open Access (OA) publishing by 50% – ie. the proportion of research publications released freely online with no paywalls – by 2028. This growth is a key indicator in the University’s plan for research and innovation, Forward with Purpose.
There have always been multiple pathways to sharing publications openly. This includes options offered by the Library, such as our Publishing program (for journals and textbooks) and the University’s institutional repository, the Education and Research Archive.
ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES: A PRICEY MECHANISM
Open Access is also offered by academic publishers. Their predominant mechanism for releasing publications openly is the Article Processing Charge, or APC. (The analogue for books is the Book Processing Charge.) In exchange for an APC, a publisher releases an article openly, rather than keeping it behind a subscription paywall.
Since the introduction of APCs, researchers have been individually responsible for paying them. APCs range up to several thousand dollars per article. The journal Nature famously charges an APC of $12,290 (USD). Across the University, researchers describe a spectrum of strategies for dealing with APCs, from routinely paying them with grant funds, to avoiding them completely due to insufficient funding.
RELIEF FROM ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES
With APCs so commonplace, particularly for longstanding, top-tier journals, relieving the APC burden on individual researchers should enable more, and easier, participation in OA publishing. The Library provides this relief through a growing number of transformative agreements, also called “read and publish” agreements. These are agreements between libraries and publishers through which the University of Alberta Library absorbs the cost of APCs, so that authors don’t have to. Rather than paying only subscription costs, as libraries have traditionally done, these agreements additionally incorporate APC relief.
CAN YOUR ARTICLE GO APC-FREE?
Your article is eligible for APC-free OA publishing if: A) the journal is covered by a transformative agreement providing APC relief, and B) the corresponding author is affiliated with the University of Alberta. To determine whether your journal is covered, visit the APC Support page maintained by librarians, which lists all APC support options.
Starting with the publisher, check whether the journal you’re considering is covered by an agreement. With some publishers, such as PLoS, John Benjamins, or Microbiology Society, all journals will be APC-free for U of A corresponding authors. With other publishers, such as Elsevier, Sage, Oxford, and Wiley, most, but not all, journals are APC-free. And with another group of publishers, such as Taylor & Francis and IEEE, U of A authors receive a discount, but not full APC relief. All these details, including current lists of covered journals, are available on the APC Support page.
Always use your U of A email address when corresponding with a journal, as it shows your affiliation.
HOW WILL YOU KNOW YOU’RE PUBLISHING APC-FREE?
When your article is accepted by a journal covered by one of the Library’s transformative agreements – congratulations! Your article will move through the publisher’s production system. With most publishers, confirming your selection of APC-free OA happens at the end of the process, when you’re signing the publication agreement. Read your options carefully and choose OA.
This choice may include selecting a Creative Commons license. For example, Wiley journals typically offer up to three Creative Commons options for OA articles: CC BY, CC BY-NC, and CC BY-NC-ND. These options specify what future (re)uses you’re comfortable with.
SWITCHING TO OPEN ACCESS AFTER PUBLICATION
An increasing number of transformative agreements give U of A authors one more option: retroactive conversion. This means that if, for whatever reason, you do not select APC-free Open Access and your work is published as a traditional subscription-only article instead, you may be able to convert it to Open Access at no cost to you.
Within their production systems, publishers don’t always make it perfectly clear if and when OA will be APC-free. This may lead some researchers to avoid the OA choice, wanting to avoid being invoiced for an APC. If you realize after publishing that your article would have been eligible for APC-free OA, retroactive conversion may be available.
ELSEVIER: AN EXAMPLE OF RETROACTIVE CONVERSION
At the U of A, across our transformative agreements, more than 90% of eligible articles are now being published openly. Thanks to such high participation, the Library is saving researchers millions of dollars in potential APC payments each year, and increasing the proportion of U of A research publications being openly released.
On January 1, 2024, we began a transformative agreement with the publisher Elsevier. As a new agreement, participation has been more modest, with 65% (n=214) of eligible articles being published OA between January 1 and September 10, 2024. This leaves 35% (n=117) of eligible articles behind subscription paywalls. If individual authors were to pay APCs for these articles, the cost would be thousands of dollars each, e.g. $4,840 (USD) for Food Hydrocolloids, or $4,490 for Chemical Engineering Journal.
However, retroactive conversion is possible with Elsevier, and we strongly encourage it. If you published an article behind the subscription paywall with Elsevier after January 1, 2024, in a journal where APC-free publishing is possible, here are the steps to have it converted to Open Access:
- Email oasupport@elsevier.com, with the subject line Requesting OA Retrospectively
- Indicate that you are affiliated with the U of A and that the University is part of the CRKN-Elsevier Agreement
- Provide the DOI(s) of the article(s)
- Request that the publishing option be changed from subscription to OA
- Follow subsequent instructions from the publisher to complete the process
For articles published in 2024, conversion requests must be submitted by January 31, 2025.
Numerous other publishers offer a similar process. If you would like to discuss a specific article and whether it could be switched to OA, or have any other questions about publisher agreements, please contact the librarian for your area.
The APC is not the only way to achieve OA. There are many options for making your work open, with no out-of-pocket costs. The Library houses initiatives such as our Publishing program, which you can also read about this Open Access Week.
Thank you to the University of Alberta Library’s Scholarly Communications Team for authoring this post.
This content is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons licence.