Open Access costs

• Institutional agreements

• Article Processing Charges (APCs)

• APC discounts

• Open Access inclusivity policies

• Additional information

The Microbiology Society offers multiple options for Open Access (OA) publishing to support authors and institutions in an increasingly OA publishing landscape. Please see our Routes to Open Access page for more information.

Institutional agreements

If you are a corresponding author affiliated with an organisation with an institutional agreement with us, you will be eligible for fee-free OA publishing in the titles covered.

Publish and Read is our Transformative Agreement model across our full portfolio: researchers affiliated with a Publish and Read institution can read all content and enjoy uncapped, APC-free OA publishing across all Microbiology Society titles.

If you are affiliated with an institution that subscribes to one of our Subscribe to Open (S2O) titles (Journal of General Virology and the Journal of Medical Microbiology), you can publish OA APC-free in the title(s) subscribed to, regardless of whether the journal is open or closed for that year.

Check if your institution has an agreement with us on our institutional agreements page.

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Article processing charges (APCs)

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.

^† The APC on Access Microbiology is only applied to the Version of Record, if the article is accepted. Pedagogy articles are published for free.

Tier 1 prices cover all original research articles and reviews published across the portfolio. Tier 2 prices cover Commentary and Letter article types as well as  Case Reports in Access Microbiology. 

For more information on the range of articles published in Microbiology Society journals please see our article types guidance.

APC discounts

Corresponding authors who are Microbiology Society members are entitled to a 30% discount on the APC. In order to redeem the discount, members should provide their membership number during the APC checkout process.

Corresponding authors submitting to Journal of General Virology who are members of American Society for Virology, Australasian Virology Society, Canadian Society for Virology and Gesellschaft für Virologie can benefit from a 20% discount on the APC. Members should contact their respective Society for the associated discount code to use during checkout.

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

Open Access inclusivity policies

As part of its ongoing efforts to make Open Access (OA) publishing more equitable, the Microbiology Society has established partnerships with Research4Life and with Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL).

• Our participation in the HINARI programme (part of Research4Life), entitles corresponding authors in Group A or B countries (as defined by the HINARI programme) to an automatic full waiver to publish in our fully OA titles.
• Our Article Processing Charge (APC) waiver agreement with EIFL covers unlimited fee-free OA publishing in all Society titles for researchers across 33 developing and transition economy countries and territories.

To facilitate a simple OA publishing experience, corresponding authors from eligible countries or territories simply need to complete their transaction within Copyright Clearance Center where the waiver will be automatically applied.

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 consider requests for assistance with paying an APC in our fully OA journals 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.

Additional information

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.

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 with an institutional agreement 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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