Open Access Publishing Agreements

The Columbia Libraries have a number of agreements with publishers that allow eligible Columbia authors to publish their articles open access for no fee or at a discount. Read the details of each agreement with the following publishers and see additional resources at the bottom of the page.

The Columbia Libraries do not help cover open access journal article processing charges (APCs) for individual authors.

If you have any questions about the content on this page, you can reach Open Scholarship Services at scholarlycommunication@library.columbia.edu.

You can also learn more about the Columbia Libraries support for Open Infrastructure initiatives on the Support for Open Access Infrastructure page.

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Article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary
  • Describes original research (eligible article types are research articles, review articles, rapid communications, brief reports, and case reports)
  • Accepted for publication in a CUP journal that is covered by the agreement
  • Accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2022 

To obtain this waiver: Follow Cambridge’s submission instructions. Use your Columbia email address when registering in Cambridge’s online submission system to obtain an APC waiver.

Read more about Columbia Libraries Free Open Access Publishing with Cambridge University Press.

Article Processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is primarily affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary.
  • Article is fully peer-reviewed research, a review, or a case-study
  • Accepted for publication in hybrid research journals, Genes & Development, Genome Research, Learning & Memory, RNA, and CSH Molecular Case Studies. 

(Editorials, comments, protocols, methods, and similar materials are not eligible. Articles in CSH Protocols, CSH Perspectives in Biology, and CSH Perspectives in Medicine are commissioned by the editors and do not accept submissions.)

  • Accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2023

To obtain this waiver: Confirm that the publisher offers the corresponding author the option to publish and distribute the article Version of Record as an Open Access publication with a CC-BY or a CC-BY-NC Version 4.0 license, with the author retaining copyright.

Learn more about Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press's  Transformative Model for High-Quality Open Access Publishing in the Biological Sciences.

Article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary. This agreement also includes contractors and alumni.
  • Accepted for publication in a Company of Biologists journal
  • Accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2023

To obtain this waiver: Follow the Company of Biologists instructions for corresponding authors.

Article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary
  • Accepted for publication in a DeGruyter journal that is covered by the agreement (2025 and 2026 title list)
  • Accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025

Article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary 
  • Accepted for publication in a IOP Publishing journal
  • Accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2024

To obtain this waiver: Follow IOP Publishing’s guide to submitting under a transformative agreement.

Article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary 
  • Accepted for publication in a John Benjamins journal
  • Accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2024

To obtain this waiver: Follow the John Benjamins submission guidelines.

Article processing charges (APCs) discounted 10% for open access articles OR a 10% discount on the Book Processing Charges (BPCs) for MDPI Books and a 15% discount on Language Editing Services. Publications must meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary
  • Accepted for publication in a MDPI publication

Under the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Community Action Publishing (CAP) agreement, article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author* is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary
  • Accepted for publication in PLoS Biology
  • Accepted on or after January 1, 2023

To obtain this waiver: Follow the PLoS instructions for submitting to PLoS Biology under the CAP agreement here. (Please note that APCs for Columbia corresponding authors are waived for PLoS Biology only.)

* Articles accepted for publication in PLoS Biology that do not have a Columbia-affiliated corresponding author but have Columbia-affiliated co-authors will receive a 25% discount on the non-member fee. Read the details here. 

Article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is primarily affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary 
  • Accepted for publication in a Royal Society journal (with the exception of Biographical Memoirs)
  • Accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2023

To obtain this waiver: Choose Columbia University as your institution when you submit your article to a Royal Society journal. Read more in the Royal Society read-and-publish flyer.

Article processing charges (APCs) waived for open access articles that meet the following eligibility criteria:

  • Corresponding author is affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard College, Teachers College, or Union Theological Seminary
  • Accepted for publication in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal
  • Accepted for publication on or after January 1, 2024

To obtain this waiver: Follow the instructions in this Royal Society of Chemistry flyer.

Subscribe to Open (S2O) 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 the following S2O publishers and/or journals. These agreements may enable Columbia authors to publish OA for free, regardless of whether or not the journal has met its funding target.

In addition to traditional journals, some fields maintain or participate in alternative models of publication. These include preprints, postprints and open peer reviews. These alternative models are typically domain-specific. A number of platforms are mentioned below. If you would like to see other platforms listed here, please reach out to scholarlycommunication@library.columbia.edu to make your suggestion.

  • arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Registered users may submit articles to be announced by arXiv. There are no fees or costs for article submission. Submissions to arXiv are subject to a moderation process that classifies material as topical to the subject area and checks for scholarly value.
  • CrimRxiv is Criminology’s global open access hub + repository. It is a service of University of Manchester + Knowledge Futures.
  • eLife is an independent nonprofit committed to improving the way research is reviewed and communicated. Manuscripts in the health sciences and life sciences are accepted for open peer review and publication. In contrast to the other platforms on this page, Public Reviews and an eLife assessment accompany all accepted preprints. Authors are expected to pay a $2,500 fee per work, but this fee is waived for authors who cannot afford to pay.
  • Law Archive is a free online archive of working papers, preprints, and fully published papers focusing on legal scholarship. Law Archive was developed in 2023 and formally launched in 2024 by the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School in collaboration with the Center for Open Science.
  • openRxiv, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science communication, operates two free online archives/distribution services. bioRxiv accepts unpublished preprints in the biological sciences whereas medRxiv accepts unpublished preprints in the medical sciences. By posting preprints on bioRxiv or medRxiv, authors are able to make their findings immediately available to the scientific community and receive feedback on draft manuscripts before they are submitted to journals. 
  • SocArXiv Papers is an open-access archive for preprints in the social sciences hosted by OSF Preprints. Broad subject categories include Arts and Humanities, Education, Law, and Social and Behavioral Sciences. Submitted papers are considered based on the service’s moderation policy.

Authors can also find a list of over 13,000 APC-free journals through the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); a list of journals that do not charge APCs can be found and searched here.

If you do not see your publisher on this list, and they have APCs, you can try the following:

  • Ask the journal’s editor for a waiver. Partial or full waivers may be granted to authors who are students, early career, or from countries with fewer resources.
  • Ask your department or PI if there is any support to pay for your APC.

As stated above, the Libraries does not help pay individual author APCs.

Some other things you can check are:

  • Whether or not you have the option to publish your article controlled/closed access so you do not have to pay a fee.
    • This may be an option for hybrid journals.
  • If you can make a version of your controlled/closed access article available in an open repository (such as Academic Commons). 
    • Ask your publisher if this is an option prior to signing any licensing agreement.
    • Many publishers allow the final accepted manuscript version of a controlled/closed access article to be deposited in a repository. 
    • If this is not a default option, try negotiating with the publisher.
    • You can use JISC's Open Policy Finder to research individual journal policies.

If you have any further questions, you can reach Open Scholarship Services at scholarlycommunication@library.columbia.edu.

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