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Open Access

Open Access (OA) is a publishing model that makes scholarly publishing available online to readers for free, allowing for the full text to be read, downloaded or shared online without financial, legal, or technical barriers.

Journal articles can be published open access by publishing in an open access journal, by publishing an article open access in a subscription journal, or by archiving your publications in an open access repository.

Why publish open access?

Open access publishing can increase the reach and impact of research by making it available immediately, for free, to a wide audience. Open access leads to a broader circulation of the work, and opportunities for broader collaboration and innovation through sharing research.

Northwestern Libraries supports an Open Access publishing model that is equitable and sustainable. The Libraries do this by using resources and memberships in academic alliances like the Big Ten Academic Alliance to support OA initiatives and projects like Knowledge Unlatched and SCOAP3.

To this end, the Libraries entered into several collective agreements with publishers to encourage and promote Northwestern-affiliated researchers who want to publish their work Open Access. These agreements will waive Article Processing Charges (APCs) to create a path to open access.

To learn more, reach out to digitalpublishing@northwestern.edu.

See below for a list of journals with waived APCs.

Journals covered by open access agreements

Northwestern Libraries has specific agreements with the following journals allowing Northwestern authors to publish open access research without having to pay Article Processing Charges.

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

  • APC waived

Chinese physics C

  • APC waived
  • In order to qualify for publication as open access, articles must have been posted as a preprint on arXiv.org in one of the four primary 'hep' categories at the time of publication.

Company of Biologists

  • APC waived
  • The affiliation of the corresponding author is restricted to research from the Evanston campus which is used to determine eligibility. When providing your contact details, please include your Northwestern email address, as well as your affiliation with Northwestern University Evanston campus.

European physical journal

  • APC waived

IOP ScienceXtra

  • APC waived

Microbiology Society

  • APC waived

Nuclear physics

  • APC waived

Physical Review C

  • APC waived
  • In order to qualify for publication as open access, articles must have been posted as a preprint on arXiv.org in one of the four primary 'hep' categories at the time of publication.

Physical Review D

  • APC waived
  • In order to qualify for publication as open access, articles must have been posted as a preprint on arXiv.org in one of the four primary 'hep' categories at the time of publication.

Physical Review Letters

  • APC waived
  • In order to qualify for publication as open access, articles must have been posted as a preprint on arXiv.org in one of the four primary 'hep' categories at the time of publication.

PLoS Biology

  • APC waived

PLoS Medicine

  • APC waived

Royal Society of Chemistry (all hybrid and gold open access portfolio)

  • APC waived

Wiley (full journal portfolio, including Hindawi’s gold open access portfolio)

  • APC waived
  • The affiliation of the corresponding author is used to determine eligibility. When providing your contact details, please include your Northwestern email address, as well as your affiliation with Northwestern University.