Article Processing Charges (APCs) are fees charged to the author or creator to cover the cost of publishing and disseminating an article, rather than charging the potential reader of the article via library or individual journal subscriptions. APCs may apply to both commercial and open access publications.

Before you pay a journal to publish your research article, check:

• The publisher or journal is reputable? There is an increasing number of unethical publishers who will take your grant funds with little or no return for the money.
• Does the publisher provides clear information about the application of APCs, including outlining the expected costs and payment measures?
• What are the copyright and licensing options available to you? Open access materials will generally carry a Creative Commons (CC) licence and ideally, the author should have the option to select the type of CC licence to be applied, as well as retaining the copyright for the material.
• What is your funder policy regarding allocating some of your grant to cover APC costs?
• Does the publisher offer a discount that you may be eligible for?

Acknowledgement University of Queensland Library

RMIT University Library does not provide funds for APCs. 

There are Read and Publish open access agreements the Library has signed with a number of scholarly publishers. When publishing in journals covered by these agreements, you may be able to publish directly to open access with no transactional article processing charges (APCs).  Submit your publications as usual, and if the Library has an agreement in place, the publisher will alert you to an open access option on acceptance of the eligible article.  Exclusions and caps apply to some journals.

Contact your School to ascertain if APC funding is available.

If there is an APC required to publish your research, it is recommended that this cost be built into the initial grant application. In Australia, the APCs are usually covered by grants, or by the authors themselves.

As an RMIT Researcher, you can choose to make the accepted manuscript available via the RMIT Research Repository under the Green open access model, and avoid paying ANY article processing charges.

This will satisfy the mandates for open access as required by both ARC and NHMRC, and will result in your research being openly available, after any embargo periods, for the broader community.

Acknowledgement University of Queensland Library

Not all open access journals charge APCs, and many will waive the fees for researchers who cannot afford them. Use the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to locate open access journals that do not charge APCs.

1. Go to DOAJ.
2. Untick the Articles checkbox under the search box.
3. Enter your discipline or keywords to search for journal titles.
4. On the results page, choose APCs from the filters on the left.
5. Select No to see journals that do not charge fees.

Note that for journals that do charge fees a price is listed.

Acknowledgement James Cook University Library