An Article Processing Charge (APC) is a fee charged by publishers to individuals or institutions wishing to publish their article in a journal which uses the Gold Open Access model. The benefit of this model is that anyone can read the research from the publisher's website for free, but the cost of the APC has to be considered.
Leeds Beckett University has open access agreements with the publishers listed below, which may mean if you are a LBU member of staff your APC is discounted or free. Please always use your Leeds Beckett email address when submitting your article and contact us for further information on how to access these discounts.
UKRI funded researchers may be eligible to apply to have their APC fee paid by the UKRI open access fund.
If no agreement is available for your chosen journal, you or your School would be liable to pay the APC. Please contact your Director of Research before submitting to one of those journals to find out if your School has funding available.
Please be aware that some journals in the fields of economics, finance and accounting incur a submission fee. Please check individual publishers and journals for details of this. You will need to speak to your Director of Research about how to pay for this before submission.
Once your article has been published, please remember to deposit it in the University's research management system Symplectic
Corresponding authors at Leeds Beckett University have unlimited open access publishing in American Physiological Society (APS) journals as part of the Read, Publish and Join agreement. Only primary research or review articles are eligible for inclusion.
Follow these guidelines when submitting your article.
Corresponding authors can publish their research on a completely open access basis in the ACM Digital Library by selecting a creative commons attribution licence (CC BY) for article sharing and reuse. This deal was negotiated by JISC and runs until the end of 2025.
15% discount on APCs for School of Health researchers only. Please contact your Director of Research first to agree the submission.
BMC are now administered as part of Springer Nature, so when submitting your article, please select the first option regarding APC payment which states "...I believe I am covered by a Springer Nature Open Access agreement." This will ensure the discount is applied.
Cambridge University Press: Corresponding authors affiliated to Leeds Beckett can publish open access in any hybrid and gold journal within the CUP Complete Journals Collections free of charge. Eligible article types include research articles, review articles and rapid communications, brief reports and case reports.
Use their Open Access waiver and discount tool to check if a journal is included in the deal.
Leeds Beckett authors may submit to any hybrid journal within the Freedom Collection (including Cell Press Hybrid and The Lancet Hybrid titles) without paying an APC. Publication in Elsevier’s Gold OA titles qualifies for a 15% discount.
Please be aware that some Elsevier journals in the fields of economics, finance and accounting incur a submission fee. You will need to speak to your Director of Research about how to pay for this before submission.
Use Elsevier's search tool to find journals included in this agreement.
Emerald allow immediate unembargoed Green Open Access in an institutional repository for the Author Accepted Manuscript. This is either with a standard publisher copyright notice or with a CC BY-NC license. Full details are on the Emerald Open Research policies website.
This was compliant with the REF2021 OA policy but not with the new UKRI OA policy which requires a CC BY license. To be compliant with UKRI you would need to pay an APC. For more information on current APC costs see the Emerald Website.
To publish with Emerald without paying an APC, on the 'Select your publishing option' page, please select the 'No' option. You should still deposit your manuscript in Symplectic to make it Open Access in the Leeds Beckett repository with no embargo.
Frontiers: 10% discount on APCs when the Leeds Beckett membership account is used. Please contact your Director of Research before submitting to ensure funds are available for remaining cost.
Hindawi is part of Wiley's Jisc agreement. Authors affiliated with UK institutions participating in Wiley’s Jisc agreement (including Leeds Beckett) may publish primary research and review articles in any of Hindawi's fully Gold Open Access journals.
This does not include any Hindawi journals which are a co-production with other publishers/organisations.
IEEE allow archiving of the Author Accepted Manuscript in the institutional repository with no embargo (Green OA). However copyright must be signed to IEEE which makes publishing with IEEE not compliant with Plan S, the UKRI or many other funders OA policies. They are compliant under REF2021 rules.
MDPI: Leeds Beckett University is member of their Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), which gives affiliated authors a 20% discount on APCs. Discounted APCs are often payable on invited review articles please check you have funds to pay the APC before agreeing to write
PLOS: LBU authors have access to unlimited publishing, at no additional charge, in the following journals:
Follow the PLOS guidelines when submitting your article.
Sage:
A new Sage agreement with Jisc for subscribing institution members to cover open access article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated corresponding authors, will run between 2023 and 2024.
Subscription journals: Corresponding authors publishing an article in 900+ subscription journals in the current Sage Premier package, as well as in the IMechE Journal Collection and the Royal Society of Medicine Collection, which offer hybrid open access publishing (Sage Choice) can be published open access, free of charge. Charges other than the author article process charge (APC) may still apply, please refer to individual journal submission guidelines.
Gold open access journals: Corresponding authors publishing an article in a Gold open access journal are also entitled to a 20% discount on the article processing charge (APC) for that journal. You can check which journals are included on the Gold journal title list.
Leeds Beckett have an open access agreement with Springer Nature, meaning that corresponding authors affiliated with the University can publish their articles open access in eligible journals with fees covered. The agreement includes publishing in more than 2,000 journals across the Springer Nature portfolio.
From June 2023, this also includes Nature, Nature Research journals and Palgrave journals. You can find lists of eligible journals that are included in the agreement on the Springer website.
Taylor and Francis: Corresponding authors at Leeds Beckett University can publish open access in Open Select (hybrid) journals, fully OA journals, as well as F1000Research and Routledge Open Research free of charge as the APC is funded by a JISC agreement.
To check if a journal is covered by the deal, use the Open Access Cost Finder.
Please note there is an annual cap of articles that can be published open access under this deal.
Wiley: Authors affiliated with UK institutions participating in Wiley’s Jisc agreement which runs from 1st January 2024 to 31st December 2025 (including Leeds Beckett) may publish primary research and review articles in any of Wiley’s hybrid (subscription), OnlineOpen journals without having to pay the APC directly.
Authors may also publish in Wileys Gold OA journals. The fee will be paid from a fund with a consortium cap per year - to be allocated on a first come first service basis, until the fund is exhausted. If the Fully OA fund is exhausted, authors will receive a 15% discount for articles published.
A small number of journals still carry page and colour charges for publishing – the Research team can advise you on these costs as the agreement does not cover them.
