An article processing charge (APC) is the fee an open access journal charges, usually after acceptance, so that anyone can read your article free. Many genuine journals take an APC and that is normal. But the fee does not buy you acceptance, or speed, or a better paper. If a journal behaves like the payment is the main thing, keep away from that journal.
In this guide we go through the kinds of open access and what the APC money is really used for. You will see what the usual fees look like, and which waivers and Indian funding options are there. We also show how to separate a fair fee from a fee you should question. Last reviewed September 2026.
What are gold, green, hybrid and diamond open access?
Open access means any reader can open and download the article free, no login and no payment. Mostly they can reuse it also. The labels tell you who is paying the cost and where the free copy is kept.
| Model | Who pays | Where the free version lives | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Usually the author pays through an APC. Sometimes a funder or institution pays it for the author | On the journal’s website, and free to read from the day it is published | The fee amount, and whether the journal is really indexed and peer reviewed |
| Diamond (sometimes called platinum) | Nobody pays to publish or to read. A university, society or government body funds the journal | On the journal’s website | Smaller journals can be slow. Some may not be indexed in Scopus or Web of Science |
| Hybrid | It is a subscription journal. The author may pay an APC to make one article open | Only your article is open. The rest of the journal stays behind a paywall | In many cases hybrid APCs are the highest of all, and paying does not add any weight to the paper |
| Green | Nobody pays an APC. Readers’ libraries pay the subscription | A version you deposit in a repository (institutional, arXiv, SSRN, Zenodo), sometimes after an embargo | Which version you are allowed to post (preprint or accepted manuscript), and from when |
| Bronze | There is no licence. The publisher makes it free to read as per its own choice | Publisher’s site, maybe only for some period | Access can be taken back. In the formal sense it is not open access |
Most PhD scholars in India don’t really sit and pick a model. You choose a journal that fits your paper and that your university will count (see our guide on choosing a journal for how to do that). After that, the model of that journal decides if an APC comes in or not. Just find out the model before you submit. Then the bill after acceptance will not come as a shock.
Indian scholars don’t use green open access enough. Suppose you publish in a subscription journal. Most large publishers allow you to post the accepted manuscript in your university repository or in a subject repository. The accepted manuscript is the version after peer review but before the publisher does the typesetting. In some cases there is an embargo of 6 to 24 months before you can post. Jisc’s Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA Romeo) gives the self-archiving policy of each publisher. Posting there is free for you, and a scholar in some small college whose library has no subscription can read the paper.
What does an article processing charge actually pay for?
In a subscription journal the libraries are paying. An open access journal does not get that subscription money, and the APC comes in its place. The journal’s running costs are divided over all the articles it publishes, and that share is your fee. Part of it goes to the manuscript submission system and to the staff who manage peer review. Reviewers themselves are almost never paid. After acceptance somebody copy-edits and typesets the paper and makes the XML and PDF files. Your fee also pays the Crossref DOI registration and long-term archiving with CLOCKSS or Portico type services. Indexing work and hosting come out of it as well, and at commercial publishers some of it is profit.
The APC never pays for the decision on your paper. In a genuine journal the editor and reviewers judge the paper without knowing whether you can pay, and they don’t bother about it. Keep that line in mind when you deal with any journal. Did they talk about the fee before review? Check if someone told you acceptance is sure once you pay, or gave you a higher amount for quick publishing. If yes, they are selling you the fee and not a journal.
How much do APCs cost?
| Type of journal | Typical APC range (list price) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Diamond journals | None | Many journals run by universities and societies, and journals supported by the Indian government, work like this |
| Society and smaller OA journals | A few hundred US dollars to about US$1,500 | Fees vary a lot. Some Indian journals charge in rupees |
| Large OA journals from major publishers | Roughly US$1,500 to US$3,500 | PLOS ONE lists US$2,477 for a research article on its fees page (checked September 2026) |
| Selective OA and hybrid titles | US$3,500 to over US$10,000 | On its own site, Nature’s open access charge is above US$12,000. Nature Communications is above US$7,000 |
All the ranges above are list prices, and publishers increase them almost every year. Many publishers quote in US dollars, pounds or euros. On invoices raised in India, GST may be added. On the day you submit, read the amount on the journal’s own fees page. Some publishers lock the fee at the rate on the submission date.
Is paying a fee a sign of a predatory journal?
No, not by itself. PLOS, BMC, Frontiers, MDPI, IEEE Access, Scientific Reports and thousands of society journals all charge APCs. Most of them are indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. On the other side, most journals in the DOAJ don’t charge authors any fee. Knowing that a journal takes a fee does not tell you much. How they handle the fee tells you a lot more.
Go through this checklist before paying to any journal:
- The fee is published on the journal’s own website before you submit. The amount is given in one currency only and it stays same after acceptance also.
- The fee is charged only after acceptance, not at the time of submission. A few genuine journals do take a small submission fee, but they state it in advance.
- The journal is listed where it claims to be. Check the title and ISSN yourself on Scopus Sources and the Web of Science Master Journal List. For open access titles, check the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) also.
- The invoice comes from the publisher itself. It should not come from an agent, a personal bank account or the UPI ID of some individual.
- A waiver or discount policy is written down, even if you are not eligible for it.
- The licence is stated. Mostly it is a Creative Commons licence like CC BY, and you can see it printed on the published articles.
- Recent articles show real review dates when you open them, and between received and accepted there should be weeks or months, not just a few days.
Is the fee being collected by an agent, a WhatsApp contact or a “publication consultant”? Stop there and check properly. Genuine publishers send the bill to the author or the institution directly. Our predatory journal guide explains hijacked and clone journals. These copy the name and ISSN of a real journal, and most of the APC money that Indian scholars send to the wrong place goes to them.
Can Indian scholars get an APC waiver or funding?
Sometimes yes, but plan assuming you won’t get one. These are the options to look into.
Publisher waivers
Many big publishers give automatic waivers or discounts to authors from low-income countries. Quite a few of them decide this using the Research4Life country lists. India is not eligible for Research4Life, because countries with total GNI above US$1 trillion are kept out. That means most Indian authors will not get an automatic waiver just because of country. Individual journals and society publishers do sometimes give a waiver if you request, for students or for authors who have no funding. Write a short email to editorial office and ask before you submit. If they agree, get the waiver in writing.
ONOS APC support
The One Nation One Subscription scheme of the Government of India started on 1 January 2025. Under it, government-funded institutions get access to journals from a group of publishers. There is an APC part too. Authors from eligible institutions who publish in selected open access journals get centrally negotiated discounts or payment. Which journals and institutions are covered, and how much of the fee, is decided by guidelines and publisher agreements. These have changed since the launch. Check the present position on the ONOS APC support page, and ask your university librarian also.
Your university and your funder
Some universities and institutes keep a publication fund, mainly for papers in high-quartile journals. Contingency grants of some fellowships can also be used for publication charges. Read their rules first. Many funds pay only for fully open access journals. Some put a cap on the amount, and some will not pay hybrid APCs. Take the approval before you submit, not after the invoice has come.
Transformative agreements
Your library may have signed a “read and publish” agreement with some publisher. In that case authors from your university or institute can publish open access in that publisher’s hybrid journals, and they don’t pay anything themselves. IITs, IISERs and central research institutes have such deals more than state universities do, and ONOS has added some. Your librarian will have the details.
How do you find Scopus journals with no publication fee?
Two kinds of journals fit here. Many scholars are searching for “free Scopus journals” and they mostly miss the first kind.
Subscription journals. In any field, most of the older Scopus-indexed journals are subscription or hybrid titles. Library subscriptions are covering their costs. So publishing there is free for you, till you tick the open access option. A few subscription journals still take page charges or colour-figure charges, so read the author guidelines once. For most of them the cost is simply zero. If you don’t have any publication fund, look at this route first.
Diamond open access journals. Neither the author nor the reader pays here. Plenty of them are indexed in Scopus. Universities, learned societies and government bodies run many of these. To find them you need two databases:
Search DOAJ and filter for no fees
On doaj.org, search journals by subject or keyword and tick the “Without fees” filter. Then only journals that record no APC and no other charges remain.
Note the ISSN of each likely journal
Open each journal record in DOAJ. Copy both the print ISSN and the e-ISSN, and also note down the website address of the journal.
Check each ISSN on Scopus Sources
Search with the ISSN only, not with the title. Keep a journal only if its coverage runs till the present and the publisher link is the same website DOAJ showed you.
Confirm on the journal’s own fees page
Fee policies do change. Read the current author guidelines of the journal before you submit, and take a screenshot of the fees part for your record.
Follow the same order. DOAJ gives the fee informations, but whether a journal is in Scopus you can only confirm from Scopus. The Scopus source title spreadsheet does have an open access column. Fee details are not there in that column, so for fee you have to see DOAJ again.
Diamond journals will usually be slower, and getting accepted is harder. Many of them run with volunteer editors, and all the scholars who want a free journal are sending papers to the same places.
Checking “free Scopus publication” offers
Sometimes an agent says the journal is free and then asks you for a “consultancy” or “processing” fee. In that case you are paying for entry to something that costs nothing to submit. You can upload the manuscript yourself through the submission system of the journal. Some agents claim they can get acceptance in a no-fee journal. Worry about that claim, more than his money. Either he is lying, or the journal is not what it looks like.
Should a PhD scholar pay for open access?
Suppose the right journal for your paper is an open access one with an APC, and you or your university can manage the cost. In that situation paying is reasonable. More people will read the paper, and other Indian researchers whose libraries have small budgets can read it free. And now many funders are asking for open access anyway.
Now take a case where a fee-charging journal and a subscription or diamond journal are equally suitable. Here most scholars don’t need to pay. Publish in the subscription journal and post the accepted manuscript as green open access. Your university counts the paper based on where it is published, and whether that journal is indexed and approved. Whether you paid is not part of it. Ask yourself these few questions:
- Is the journal indexed where your university wants it? Check this yourself. Our Scopus guide shows how.
- Is the fee reasonable for what you get? An APC of US$3,000 for a journal with modest citation metrics is too much. Those numbers we have explained in our guide to impact factor and quartiles.
- Would you still pick this journal if it was free? Many scholars are choosing a journal just because it publishes fast, and that alone is weak reason to pay.
- What rights are you giving away? Look at the licence you will grant. Under CC BY anyone can reuse your work if they give credit.
One rule we don’t bend on is paying the fee only to the publisher, and only after peer review.
Want a specialist to help with this in your own work? Scopus Journal Selection and Submission Guidance: a free first consultation, then a written scope and fixed quote.
Sources
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Open Policy Finder, formerly SHERPA Romeo: publisher open access and self-archiving policies (Jisc)
- One Nation One Subscription: APC support
- Research4Life: eligibility criteria
- PLOS publication fees
- Nature Communications: open access fees and funding
- Think. Check. Submit. journal checklist
FAQ
Questions scholars ask
Do I pay the APC at submission or after acceptance?
In genuine journals it is almost always after acceptance. A small number take a little submission or processing fee, and that is clearly published. Suppose a journal wants the full publication fee before anyone has reviewed the paper. Stop and check that journal carefully before going ahead.
Does paying an APC make peer review faster?
No. Big publishers sometimes run their open access journals with efficient editorial offices, but the reviewers still need weeks. If a journal offers you quicker review for a higher fee, what they are selling is not peer review.
Is a paper in an open access journal worth less for my PhD?
No, it is not. Universities and selection committees check if the journal is peer reviewed and indexed or approved. How the journal earns money is not their concern. A paper in a well-indexed open access journal counts the same as one in a subscription journal.
Can I post my paper on ResearchGate or my university repository?
Mostly you can put the accepted manuscript in a repository, and many times the preprint also. Each publisher has its own rules and embargo though. Look at Jisc’s Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA Romeo), or read the sharing policy of the publisher. Under CC BY, the final published version also you can share.
The journal says it is “UGC approved” and charges ₹3,000. Is that fine?
The UGC-CARE list was discontinued. Today a journal writing “UGC approved” means very little by itself. Check the journal in Scopus, in Web of Science and in the approved list of your own university. Before paying any amount, match the ISSN with the real journal.
