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York University Libraries

Investments in Open Access Publishing

York University Libraries (YUL) supports open access publishing at the university by: 

  • Entering into agreements with publishers to secure article processing charge discounts for York authors. 
  • Maintaining memberships and funding commitments with organizations such as the Public Knowledge Project and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition to support open access publishing nationally and internationally.   
  • Providing open access publishing infrastructure for York-affiliated journals through York Digital Journals. 
  • Managing YorkSpace, York University’s open access institutional repository, which supports York researchers in complying with open access policy requirements. 

Getting Help

  • Email opendeposit@yorku.ca if you have any questions about accessing the Libraries’ article processing charge discounts and other open access publishing supports. 

Article Processing Charge Discounts 

Many of York University Libraries’ article processing charge (APC) discounts and agreements are negotiated by the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). The Libraries’ consortial membership in CRKN allows us to take part in various APC discounts, read and publish agreements, and funding partnerships that support open access publishing. 

Use the Libraries' search tool to locate APC discounts and waivers for eligible Gold and Hybrid open access journals or expand each accordion to learn more about specific agreements with each publisher:

  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: $250 USD discount on APC 
  • Time period: 2025 to 2027 
  • Journals covered by discount: All American Chemical Society Hybrid open access journals. 
  • Exclusions? None 
  • Instructions for accessing discount: When submitting your manuscript, select York University for your institutional affiliation. More information is available on the publisher’s webpage. 
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: 100%
  • Time period: July 2024 to December 2027 
  • Journals covered by discount: All of ACM's peer-reviewed scholarly publications. 
  • Exclusions? None 
  • Instructions for accessing discount: When submitting your manuscript, use your York University email address and select York University as your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount. Consult the publisher's help documentation (PDF) to learn more.
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: 100% coverage of APC 
  • Time period: 2022 to 2024
  • Journals covered by discount: All Cambridge Hybrid and Gold open access journals. 
  • Exclusions? None  
  • Instructions for accessing discount: When submitting your manuscript, select York University for your institutional affiliation. Cambridge requires authors to use the automated system, RightsLink, to set their institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount. Use Cambridge's RightsLink Step-by-Step Guide (PDF) to learn more.  
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount:  
    • 100% coverage of APC for five CSP journals: 
      • 1. Biochemistry and Cell Biology 
      • 2. Canadian Journal of Physics 
      • 3. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology 
      • 4. Genome 
      • 5. Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering. 
    • 25% discount of APC for all Hybrid CSP journals. 
  • Time period: 2023 to 2025 
  • Exclusions? The following CSP Gold Open Access journals are not eligible for the APC discounts: 
    • 1. Arctic Science 
    • 2. Drone Systems and Applications 
    • 3. FACETS 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript using ScholarOne, select York University for your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount.
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discounts: 100% APC discount for the following journals:
    • Development (Hybrid OA journal)
    • Journal of Cell Science (Hybrid OA journal)
    • Journal of Experimental Biology  (Hybrid OA journal) 
    • Disease Methods & Mechanisms (Gold OA journal)
    • Biology Open (Gold OA journal)
  • Time period: 2024 to 2026
  • Exclusions? None
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript, select York University as your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount. Please review the Company of Biologists' author submission guidelines.
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: 100% coverage of APC for all open access journals 
  • Time period: 2023 to 2025 
  • Exclusions? None 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript, select York University for your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount.
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount:
    • 1. Eligible Elsevier Hybrid open access journals: 100% APC discount
    • 2. Eligible Elsevier Gold open access journals: 15% APC discount 
  • Time period: 2025 to 2026
  • Exclusions? There are several Elsevier journals not included in this agreement, such as Cell Press and Lancet. Review this spreadsheet (Excel) to confirm which journals are included or excluded from the agreement. Note: Tabs 1 and 2 cover eligible Hybrid journals and Tab 3 covers eligible Gold journals.
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript, select York University as your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount. Review Elsevier’s Author Workflow document (PDF) to learn more. 
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: 100% APC discount for most Hybrid and Gold open access journals 
  • Time period: 2021 to 2024 
  • Exclusions? Review Tab 2 of this spreadsheet (Excel) to see a list of IOP journal titles excluded from this agreement. 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: Consult the publisher’s guide to learn how authors can submit articles under this agreement. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount.
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: 10% APC discount for articles published in MDPI journals. 
  • Time period: 2024 to 2025 
  • Exclusions? Only one discount through MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program is permitted per paper. Researchers cannot combine the discount with other available discounts (i.e., discount vouchers, society membership discounts, etc.). 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript, use your York email address. You will then be prompted to select York University as your institution. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount.
  • Article Process Charge (APC) Discount: 
    • 100% APC discount for over 350 Oxford Hybrid open access journals 
    • 10% APC discount for Oxford’s Gold open access journals 
  • Time period: 2024 to 2026 
  • Exclusions? This spreadsheet includes a list of eligible and ineligible journals (Excel) for the 100% APC discount for Hybrid open access Oxford journals and the 10% APC discount for Gold open access Oxford journals. 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When your article is accepted for publication in a hybrid or gold journal, you must use Oxford’s online system to identify yourself as being affiliated with York University. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount. Their step-by-step guide (PDF) includes instructions for using this system. 
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: 100% APC discount for 12 PLOS journals: 
    • 1. PLOS Biology 
    • 2. PLOS Climate 
    • 3. PLOS Computational Biology 
    • 4. PLOS Digital Health 
    • 5. PLOS Genetics 
    • 6. PLOS Global Public Health 
    • 7. PLOS Medicine 
    • 8. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 
    • 9. PLOS ONE 
    • 10. PLOS Pathogens 
    • 11. PLOS Sustainability and Transformation 
    • 12. PLOS Water 
  • Time period: 2025 to 2026
  • Exclusions? none 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript, select York University as your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount. Review PLOS’ publishing FAQ for authors. 
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discount: 100% APC discount for all RSC Hybrid and Gold open access journals. 
  • Time period: 2025 to 2027 
  • Exclusions? none 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript, select York University as your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount. Review RSC's open access publishing guide for authors (PDF).
  • Article Processing Charge (APC) Discounts: 25% APC discount in T&F Open Select Hybrid open access journals. View the full list of journals (Excel). 
  • Time period: 2025 to 2026 
  • Exclusions? None 
  • Instructions for accessing discounts: When submitting your manuscript, select York University as your institutional affiliation. Co-authored manuscripts must be submitted by the York author to qualify for the discount.

Open Access Publishing Memberships 

The Libraries maintains the following memberships to support open access publishing, the development of open access infrastructure, and open access advocacy efforts.

  • Type of membership: The Libraries is a member through its consortial membership in the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.  
  • What it supports: Coalition Publica is a partnership between Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project. The partnership supports the development of national non-commercial, open source infrastructure for digital scholarly publishing, dissemination and research. 
  • Learn more on Coalition Publica’s website. 
  • Type of membership: The Libraries are an institutional member of the MIT Press Direct to Open eBooks program. 
  • What it supports: Our membership supports the open access publishing of approximately 80-90 MIT Press titles each year since 2022. It also provides the York community with access to the MIT eBook backlist/archive (approximately 2,500 titles). 
  • Learn more on the MIT Direct to Open webpage. 
  • Type of membership: The Libraries are an institutional member of the OPB Library Membership Programme. 
  • What it supports: This program supports OBP’s open access scholarly monograph publishing program. OBP was established by academics at the University of Cambridge and has published over 200 peer-reviewed open access books to date. 
  • Learn more on the OBP website. 
  • Type of membership: The Libraries support PKP through its consortial membership in the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.  
  • What it supports: PKP supports the building of open source publishing platforms, such as Open Journal System. Their open source software supports open access scholarly publishing on an international level. 
  • Learn more on the PKP website. 
  • Type of membership: The Libraries is an institutional member of Punctum Books’ Library Membership program. 
  • What it supports: The Libraries’ membership fees helps support Punctum Books in publishing scholarly open access books that cover a range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, fine arts, and architecture and design. Our membership helps ensure that authors do not have to pay book publishing charges. 
  • Learn more on the Punctum Books website.  
  • Type of membership: The Libraries are a member of SCOAP³ through its consortial membership in the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. 
  • What it supports: This membership supports SCOAP³ in converting key journals in the field of High-Energy Physics into open access journals. It also supports the continued open access publishing in these journals, at no cost to the authors. 
  • Learn more on the SCOAP³ website. 
  • Type of membership: The Libraries are a member of SCOSS through its consortial membership in the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. 
  • What it supports: Since 2018, SCOSS has been funding key non-commercial open science infrastructure to ensure the sustainability of the software. Some of the products they have funded include Sherpa RoMEO (an aggregator of open access policies for journals) and DSpace (open source software for institutional repositories). 
  • Learn more on the SCOSS website. 
  • Type of membership: The Libraries is an institutional member of SPARC. 
  • What it supports: SPARC is a non-profit advocacy organization that supports open access, open data, and open education initiatives at the national and international level. They support member institutions by providing resources, training programs, targeted briefings, and in-depth analyses to support advocacy work in opening up research and education. 
  • Learn more on the SPARC website. 
  • Type of membership: The Libraries is an institutional member of the University of Michigan Press’ Fund to Mission eBook Program. 
  • What it supports: The Libraries’ membership helps support the University of Michigan Press’ goal of converting at least 75% of their eBook monographs (approximately 60 books a year) to open access monographs beginning in 2023. Our membership fees help ensure authors do not have to pay book processing charges to publish open access monographs with this press. 
  • Learn more on the Fund to Mission webpage.