What Are Article Processing Charges (APCs)?

Article processing charges, commonly called APCs, are fees that authors or their institutions pay to make a research article freely available to all readers upon publication. Understanding what APCs are, what they fund, and how to evaluate them is increasingly important for any researcher planning to publish — whether your funder mandates open access, your institution has signed a transformative agreement, or you are simply trying to budget your research costs accurately.

This guide explains APCs from first principles: what they are, what they pay for, when they apply, what ranges look like across the industry, how waivers work, and what questions you should ask a journal before you submit.

What Is an Article Processing Charge?

An APC is a fee charged to cover the costs of peer-reviewed publication under an open-access model. In traditional subscription publishing, readers (or their institutional libraries) pay to access content; the publisher recoups its editorial, production, and distribution costs from subscription revenues. Open access inverts this model: content is freely available to all readers, and the costs of publication are instead recovered from authors, institutions, or funders on the supply side.

The label "article processing charge" is the most common term, but you will also encounter "publication fee," "open access fee," or "author charge" — these are generally synonymous, though some publishers distinguish between them in edge cases. What matters is the underlying arrangement: a fee paid by or on behalf of the author in exchange for open-access publication of a specific article.

What Do APCs Actually Fund?

A common misconception is that APCs simply pay for "putting the paper online." In practice, the editorial and production workflow for a peer-reviewed article involves substantial costs whether or not the paper is ultimately published:

• Editorial management — handling submissions, coordinating desk review, recruiting and managing peer reviewers, communicating decisions, and managing revision rounds. This often involves both professional staff and editor honoraria or stipends.
• Peer review coordination — while most reviewers are unpaid volunteers, the administrative overhead of the peer review system (tracking, reminding, resolving disagreements, and managing editorial board relationships) is real and significant.
• Copyediting and production — professional copyediting, typesetting, XML tagging, and DOI registration. These services are performed on every accepted article.
• Hosting and archiving — long-term digital storage, indexed metadata provision to abstracting databases, and the technical infrastructure of the journal's platform.
• Customer and author support — responding to author queries, handling permissions requests, and managing post-publication corrections.

Not all of these costs scale linearly with the number of articles published, which is why APC levels vary substantially across journals of different sizes and operational models.

When Are APCs Charged?

A critical point that many first-time authors misunderstand: APCs are almost always charged at acceptance, not at submission. You should not be asked to pay a fee simply to have your paper considered for review. Journals that charge submission fees are the exception (they exist in some fields), and submission fees are usually modest amounts to deter low-quality submissions — they are distinct from APCs.

The sequence is typically: submit → peer review at no charge → receive acceptance decision → receive APC invoice → pay → paper published open access. This means you incur no APC cost if your paper is rejected. It also means that you should have a clear plan for how the APC will be paid before you receive your acceptance — discovering that your institution's publishing fund is exhausted or that your funder's OA mandate requires a specific license type is easier to resolve before you have an accepted paper waiting on payment.

What Do APC Ranges Look Like Across the Industry?

APC levels vary enormously across the publishing landscape, and generalization is hazardous. A few broad patterns are commonly reported:

Journal type	Typical APC range (commonly reported)	Notes
Large commercial OA journals	$1,000 – $5,000+ USD	Higher-end rates at journals with high rejection rates and rapid turnaround
Society and mid-tier OA journals	$500 – $2,500 USD	Wide variation by discipline and journal prestige
Diamond/platinum OA journals	$0	Funded by institutions, societies, or consortia; no author charge
Hybrid journals (OA option within subscription title)	$1,500 – $4,500 USD	OA option alongside paywalled content

These figures are industry-wide generalizations drawn from publicly available fee schedules; they do not represent any BRJ journal's specific pricing. For BRJ's actual APC information, visit the BRJ APC page or the detailed author publication charges page.

APC Waivers and Funding Sources

High APCs can be a genuine barrier for researchers at institutions with limited financial resources, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Most reputable open-access journals have formal waiver or discount programs to address this. Common categories include:

• Geographic waivers — automatic or near-automatic fee waivers for corresponding authors based in countries on the World Bank's low-income economy list. Many journals extend partial discounts to lower-middle-income countries.
• Hardship waivers — discretionary waivers available to individual authors who can demonstrate financial need, regardless of country of affiliation.
• Institutional agreements — transformative agreements (also called read-and-publish or publish-and-read agreements) negotiated between publishers and research institutions or library consortia, under which the institution pays a collective fee that covers APC costs for affiliated authors. Check with your institution's library to find out which publishers your institution has active agreements with.
• Funder mandates and grant coverage — many funding bodies (national research councils, foundations, and government agencies) explicitly allow APC costs to be charged to research grants. Some funders, including several European national agencies, require that output be published open access and will cover APCs as a condition of their grants.

Waiver availability and eligibility criteria differ by journal. The standard approach is to request a waiver at the point of submission or upon acceptance, before making any payment. Legitimate journals will consider waiver requests in good faith — journals that refuse to consider waivers at all, or that make the process deliberately opaque, are a warning sign.

Questions to Ask a Journal Before You Submit

Do not wait until acceptance to investigate a journal's APC policies. Answering these questions before submission prevents unpleasant surprises:

1. What is the current APC? — Confirm the exact figure in your currency, including any applicable taxes. Fee schedules sometimes change, and the amount at the time of your submission may differ from what you read on an older webpage.
2. Is an APC charged at submission, at acceptance, or both? — Reputable journals charge only at acceptance (or not at all, in the diamond model). Submission fees that are non-refundable regardless of outcome are a red flag.
3. What license will be assigned to my published article? — Open-access licenses vary in what reuse they permit. Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) is the most permissive and is required by many funders. CC BY-NC (non-commercial) or CC BY-ND (no derivatives) restrict reuse in ways that may not satisfy your funder's mandate.
4. Is a waiver or discount available, and how do I apply? — Ask this explicitly; some journals offer waivers that are not prominently displayed on their website.
5. Does my institution have a transformative agreement with this publisher? — Check with your library before paying an APC out of pocket; you may be covered under an existing agreement.
6. Where will the article be indexed after publication? — Publication alone does not guarantee discoverability; confirm which databases the journal is indexed in.

APCs and the Open-Access Landscape

APCs are one mechanism within a broader and evolving open-access ecosystem. Understanding where APCs fit alongside other OA models — diamond OA (funded by institutions or societies, no author charge), green OA (self-archiving of accepted manuscripts in repositories), and hybrid journals — helps authors make better decisions about where and how to publish. For a fuller treatment of these models and their trade-offs, see our guide to open-access publishing explained.

BRJ's open-access commitments and policies are described in detail on the BRJ open access policy page. Reading that page will give you a clear picture of the licensing options, fee structures, and access conditions that apply to work published in BRJ journals.

Publish with Boston Research Journals

If you are ready to discuss your manuscript and learn about the publishing options available to you, visit our manuscript submission page. The BRJ editorial team can answer questions about fees, waivers, and licensing that apply to your specific situation and field.