Scholar Commons Guide

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Journals use various means to generate the income required to cover publishing costs (e.g., editorial costs, peer review administrative costs). The most common is to charge a subscription fee for individuals or libraries. For open access and hybrid journals, an alternative approach is article processing charges (APCs). These are sometimes referred to as publication fees. This fee typically is paid by the author's institution or a research funder rather than by the author. A majority of open access journals do not charge APCs, but a significant and growing number do. These publication fees are the most common funding method for professionally published open access articles. APC fees for academic research are usually expensive, effectively limiting open access circulation among less affluent institutions, scholars, and students.

At Santa Clara, researchers have access to the Provost Publication Grant to help cover the costs of APCs. The guidelines are:

• Grants are available to support scholarly or creative contributions to academic disciplines
• Eligibility: Tenure-track faculty, tenured faculty, senior lecturers, lecturers, and other faulty with full-time appointments are eligible for a publication grant.
• Deadline: Ongoing
• Supported works: scholarly or creative contributions
• Use of funds: subventions, indexing, copyright permissions, and other costs associated with creative or scholarly exhibitions or publications, including publications in digital venues
• Funding limit: Requests will be funded up to $1,000 per scholarly publication, creative exhibition, or performance.

Here are some links to OA journal and monograph initiatives that have no APCs or discounted APCs