Choose sustainable open access publishing

The Libraries is committed to investment in models that advance real, lasting change to open access (OA) publication systems.

To shift towards a more sustainable and equitable system of scholarly communication, we invest in

publishing models that benefit all readers and all authors, and
scholarly-owned open access frameworks and organizations that promote and provide essential infrastructure to facilitate the transition to open access.

Researchers play an essential role

Researchers and scholars have an important role to play in building more sustainable publishing systems. By submitting high-quality work to journals built on sustainable open access models, researchers and scholars can ensure these journals are viable for many years to come. They may also contribute their expertise by serving on an editorial board. Contact [email protected] to get started.

Sustainable and equitable models

The Libraries is proud to support “diamond” OA models, where publications are free for anyone to read and free for all authors to publish.

Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy (JCCPE): JCCPE is a new diamond open access journal that publishes climate research to enable urban governments, policymakers, and practitioners access to current, evidence-based research.
Open Book Publishers: The Libraries supports Open Book Publishers, which publishes academic monographs, edited volumes, textbooks and reports in humanities, social sciences and the sciences. Authors submit their manuscript to a rigorous peer review process and, if accepted, the monograph will be published open access at no cost to the authors.
Open Library of Humanities: Open Library of Humanities publishes 30 diamond open access journals covering humanities and social science disciplines, including classics, philosophy, political theory, sociology, anthropology, and more.
Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3): University of Minnesota participates in the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3). Through SCOAP3, authors affiliated with the University can publish in 11 open access journals in the area of high energy physics at no cost.
Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP): The Libraries supports diamond OA journals through OACIP: American Indian Culture and Research Journal; Cultural Anthropology; Engaging Science, Technology, and Society; Foucault Studies; History of Media Studies; liquid blackness; and Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.
Demography: The UMN Libraries are supporting Demography as it transitions from a traditional subscription model to an open access model in which there are no APCs for any author, regardless of their affiliations.
Subscribe-to-open journals: The Libraries supports numerous journals using the subscribe-to-open (S2O) model. These include titles from Annual Reviews, the American Society for Microbiology, Berghahn Books, EDP Sciences, the European Mathematical Society, the European Mathematical Society (EMS) Press, select De Gruyter titles, select Royal Societyjournals, Pluto Journals, and Project MUSE See this list for more journals following the S2O model.

Open access infrastructure

The Libraries helps make content open through memberships and support for scholarly-owned infrastructure.

And we support organizations that promote and provide essential infrastructure to support the transition to open access.

The fraught economics of article processing charge (APC)-based open access publishing

Publishing, even online, has costs. APCs were initially introduced to create an option for journals to cover publication costs without charging subscription fees, either as part of a transition from a subscription-only model or for new fully OA publications, where all articles are openly available.

From an economic standpoint:

Open Access is not inherently costlier than closed access.
For hybrid journals, there is no additional cost associated with making an article open access if it was free (to the author) to publish closed; authors still provide their works to publishers for free and researchers still conduct peer review for free.
To date, few publishers have reduced subscription prices to reflect this additional income; instead, subscription prices continue to rise and many APCs simply provide an additional, lucrative revenue stream to publishers.
APCs have not met their promise of broad systemic change around open access. Although they have been a mechanism for some OA publishing, few previously-closed publications shift to fully OA models.

Economic transparency about publishing costs and use of APC income varies widely between publishers.

Some publishers are transparent (see the cOAlition S Price Transparency Framework and Ubiquity) about their pricing, and we know they have set APCs near or below the cost of publication.
Most publishers do not provide a clear accounting for how APC funds are used, or how APC prices are set.
Some publishers have made it clear that their prices are based on what they believe the market will bear.

The substantial increase in some APCs over time is making participation in this model cost-prohibitive for many authors.

Some publishers have kept APC fees stable over time but many other publishers have increased APCs very rapidly—from 2005 to 2018, average APCs increased three times the rate of inflation and continue to increase.
Fees now range from a few hundred dollars, to over $8,500 for some fully OA journals, and more than $12,850 for hybrid journals.

APCs create inequity

Because APC models are “pay to play,” they cut many researchers out of the scholarly conversation. Publishers have suggested that a system of APC waivers can address this problem. But waivers only partially address the issue. In reality, waivers reveal “a patronizing view of scientific sharing which translates into the control of science in the hands of rich countries and diminishes the Global South as a mere passive observer with no control...” (Debat and Babini, 2019).

Publishers often limit the number and size of waivers they provide. For example, although some publishers give an automatic 100% waiver to authors from low-income countries, they often provide only partial waivers to other authors. A guarantee to waive 50% of an $8,900 APC still means an author can face a more than $4,000 bill! Many authors at the University of Minnesota are simply not in a position to pay all or part of an APC, despite being at a highly funded institution in a high-income country.

Your research matters. Scholarship from all researchers — those from the Global South, those who do not receive grant funding, those who are not affiliated with a research institution—matters. Publishing models that systematically prevent many researchers from participating are inherently inequitable.

What this means at the University of Minnesota

In consultation with representatives of University governance, including faculty and graduate student authors, UMN Libraries and the Research Innovation Office (RIO)—formerly the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR)—discontinued direct subsidies of individual fees as of June 30, 2019.

However, the Libraries has contracts with certain publishers that make it possible for University of Minnesota-affiliated authors to obtain discounts on APCs.

Bibliography with additional perspectives on APCs

Beigel, F., Brockington, D., Crosetto, P., Derrick, G., Fyfe, A., Gomez Barreiro, P., Hanson, M.A., Haustein, S., Larivière, V., Noe, C., Pinfield, S., & Wilsdon, J. (2025). The Drain of Scientific Publishing. arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.04820.

Butler, L. A., Hare, M., Schönfelder, N., Schares, E., Alperin, J. P., & Haustein, S. (2024). An open dataset of article processing charges from six large scholarly publishers (2019-2023). arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.08356.

Debat and Babini. (2019). Plan S in Latin America: Primum non nocere. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3482932

Khoo, S. Y.-S. (2019). Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity: An Open Access Sequel to the Serials Crisis. LIBER Quarterly, 29(1), 1–18. DOI: 10.18352/lq.10280

Kowaltowski, A., Oliveira, M., Silber, A., & Chaimovich, H. (August 31, 2021). The push for open access is making science less inclusive. Times Higher Education. timeshighereducation.com/opinion/push-open-access-making-science-less-inclusive

Mekonnen, A., Downs, C., Effiom, E.O., Razafindratsima, O., Stenseth, N.C., & Chapman, C.A. (August 12, 2021). What costs half a year’s pay for African scholars? Open Access. Nature (596): 189. DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-02173-7

Romaine, S., Albee, B., Elliott, C.M., &. Bosch, S. (2024). Periodicals Price Survey 2024. libraryjournal.com/story/oa-ai-and-dei-triple-advantage-or-triple-threat-periodicals-price-survey-2024

South African National Information Consortium. (2020). SANLiC Statement on Open Access. sanlic.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SANLiC-Statement-on-Open-Access-November-2020.pdf

Contact

Contact an open access expert at [email protected] for more information.