By: Kathryn Pope, Esther Jackson, Katherine Brooks
Did you know that there are numerous strategies that you can use to avoid paying article processing charges (APCs) when publishing open access (OA)?
Open Access Publishing Agreements from the Columbia Libraries
You can use the Journal Search Tool (JST) to see if we have an agreement for a particular journal. For details about all of Columbia’s publishing agreements, head to the OA Agreements page. Most agreements allow Columbia-affiliated authors (which often includes Barnard, Teachers College, and Union Theological Seminary) to publish their journal articles OA at no cost.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Authors can browse a list of over 13,000 APC-free journals through the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Journals indexed in the DOAJ must meet basic criteria before being included.
Open Journals Collective (OJC)
This collective includes 285 no-fee open access journals from university-based publishers.
Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP)
This program, led by the non-profit Lyrasis, includes nine no-fee open access journals that would otherwise not receive institutional support for their publishing operations.
Subscribe to Open (S2O)
Participating journals allow all authors – anywhere in the world – to publish OA for free, as long as a journal has met its annual funding target. Columbia Libraries supports many S2O publishers and/or journals. Our S2O agreements may enable Columbia authors to publish OA for free, regardless of whether or not the journal has met its funding target. To see the list of S2O journals that Columbia supports, see the Open Access Publishing Agreements page.
Authors comfortable working with APIs can identify high-impact journals in OpenAlex and then use the DOAJ API to identify which journals are open access and charge no or low fees. For a consultation about how to use this method, please contact openscholarship@library.columbia.edu
APC waivers
Many OA journals waive APCs for authors based in a lower-income country, and some waive for early-career authors. Each publisher or journal has its own waiver criteria, so verify the details with journal editors. You may find a link to a journal’s waiver policy in the DOAJ record for the journal, or you can search on the journal’s website.
Subscription-based journals combined with open repositories
Even if you publish an article behind a subscription paywall, you can often make a version of that article freely accessible in an open repository or on your personal website. Check the JISC Open Policy Finder to determine your journal’s standard policies. If you sign a publication agreement for a subscription-access publication, try to retain the right to distribute a version of your paper in a repository such as Columbia’s Academic Commons. If these rights aren’t built into your author agreement, and you can propose an author addendum to add them.
Preprint servers
Depending on your discipline, it may be appropriate to disseminate your research through a preprint server. Learn more about available preprint servers on the Open Access Publishing Agreements page.
If you have questions, please feel free to follow up with us at oa-agreements@library.columbia.edu.
Some of the content in this post was previously published as a part of Open Access Week 2025 activities. Image courtesy of cottonbro studio.