Open Access costs

• Open Access charges

• Fee-free Open Access via Publish and Read

• APCs: 

  • Costs

  • Taxes

  • Subsidies and discounts

  • Refund policy

• Open Access inclusivity

• How to make your article Open Access

Open Access charges

The Microbiology Society does not charge submission fees, page or colour fees, or any other publishing-associated fees, other than Gold Open Access (OA) as described below. It is free to submit and publish any article in Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, and International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology if authors choose the subscription route.

To publish an article OA in any of the journals, OA publication charges may apply, as described below.

There are two routes to publishing Gold OA: via a Publish and Read licence or via an article processing charge (APC). For either route, authors who wish to publish Gold OA should choose the OA option during the submission process and will then be routed to our OA transaction vendor (CCC RightsLink) where they will either be matched against a Publish and Read institution and routed for fee-free publication or be offered APC payment options.

Fee-free Open Access via Publish and Read

If you are a corresponding author based at an institution who has signed a Publish and Read deal with the Society, you can publish Open Access in any of our journals or open research platform, as much as you want, without any charges to you as an author. Publish and Read is designed to be simple for all involved. Corresponding authors simply submit using their institutional email address. Eligible authors are matched against the list of Publish and Read institutions and the article is routed for the fee-free option. 

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Article processing charges (APCs)

Costs

Authors who wish to publish Gold OA, but are not covered by a Publish and Read licence may do so by paying an APC at the following rates.

†Thanks to funding from Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to develop the platform, the Society is able to offer authors a 100% subsidy to cover their APC during the first year of launch of the platform, if not covered by Publish and Read.

Taxes

The UK requires that VAT rates be applied based on the location of the customer for electronic services. Charges are applied during the APC checkout process, and are as follows:

• 20% on all transactions with UK individuals or institutions;
• 20% on transactions with EU individuals without a VAT registration number;
• 0% on transactions with EU institutions with a VAT registration number;
• 0% on transactions with individuals or institutions outside of the UK or EU.

Subsidies and discounts

We offer APC subsidies, as well as special offers for reviewers and members of our Editorial Boards. The standard subsidies are:

• 30% discount for corresponding authors who are members of the Microbiology Society. Members should provide their membership number during the APC checkout process.
• 20% discount for corresponding authors submitting to Journal of General Virology who are members of our affiliated societies: American Society for Virology, Australasian Virology Society, Canadian Society for Virology, Gesellschaft für Virologie, and the Asociación Mexicana de Microbiología. Members should contact their respective Society for the associated discount code to use during checkout.
• 100% discount for corresponding authors submitting to Microbiology, Microbial Genomics or Access Microbiology who are based in a low (Group A) or middle-income (Group B) country, as defined by the HINARI programme, via Research4Life. Authors should complete the transaction within Copyright Clearance Center where the discount will be automatically applied.

Please note that only one discount may be applied per submission.

Refund policy

APCs will be reimbursed if an article does not comply with the research funder's requirements because of our oversight, or if a corresponding author from a Publish and Read institution has not been identified due to our oversight. 

APCs will not be refunded where article publication is not compliant with funder mandates for reasons outside our control. The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies maintains a list of policymakers and their mandates.

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Open Access inclusivity

The Society acknowledges that not all authors receive financial support to publish their work Open Access. In order to maintain the sustainability of our publishing programme and hold true to our values of equity and inclusivity, we will apply the following procedure when an author requests assistance with paying an APC in Microbiology, Microbial Genomics or Access Microbiology so long as it is done so at manuscript submission so that there is time to act before (and in the hope that) your paper is accepted for publication. Please note that securing funding for your Open Access paper is no guarantee that it will be published, that decision is made by an independent Editor who is unaware of the funding status, and their decision is based purely on the scientific merits of your work.

When requesting assistance to cover APCs, we ask authors to do the following before/during submission:

1. Check whether the corresponding author is from a country in Group A or B of the HINARI programme and if so, their paper is automatically entitled to 100% APC discount. The discount is applied by authors during the check-out process if the paper is accepted.
2. Explore alternative payment options, including Publish and Read eligibility:
   1. Please ask your librarian and/or research manager to either upgrade an existing subscription, or to sign-up to Publish and Read (you can use this Library Recommendation Form); please copy copy [email protected] into your email.
   2. Provide your librarian’s contact details to our staff to follow up with a Publish and Read price and license terms.
   3. Check amongst an author group whether one of the contributory authors is affiliated to a Publish and Read participating institution and could assume (co-) corresponding author responsibilities. 
3. Check OA discounts and funding opportunities, through the Society’s membership offers, as described above.

If none of the above provide a solution in a reasonable amount of time we will proceed with peer review and, upon acceptance, publication of the article, although we reserve the right to limit the number of free or highly discounted OA articles published from any single institution. We will ask you to make a voluntary contribution towards publications costs if you are able. Following this we will provide you with a discount code to use at checkout. 

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How to make your article Open Access

If you want your article to be immediately Open Access on publication, you should check that you have funding covered. If you have, select ‘Yes’ to the Open Access question during submission. If you require assistance with funding, please indicate this during submission, provide your librarian's contact details, and ensure you have followed the Open Access inclusivity steps above. Our staff will contact you once you submit with the next steps.

If  your article is accepted, you will receive an email containing a link to the Copyright Clearance Center Rightslink platform where you will see that either:

• your publication costs have been covered by your institution under a Publish and Read agreement (please see details of the workflow here), or
• you will be presented with the cost of the APC, which you can either pay immediately by credit card or by requesting an invoice. 
• If you have a code for a discount or subsidy, or are based at a HINARI country, you will apply this during the checkout process.

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