Gold Open Access in journals
We encourage the use of the CC BY licence for Gold OA journal articles, but authors are generally able to choose more restrictive CC licences if they wish to prevent commercial use or adaptation of their articles in new works. For more information about reuse options please see our guidance on CC licences.
Funding Gold Open Access
Multiple routes to funding Gold OA are available to authors, including institutional open access agreements, the Cambridge Open Equity Initiative (COEI), and other waivers and discounts. In some cases Gold OA articles are supported by an Article Processing Charge (APC), typically paid by the author’s funding body or institution.
Article processing charges (APCs)
When an APC is required for publishing Gold OA, this can be covered in various ways, including by funding bodies, institutions, agreements between publishers and institutions, and sometimes by the author themself.
Any payment request for an APC is only made after an article has been accepted for publication, and APCs are only applicable for content that is published Gold OA. In other cases no APC is required.
Authors who do not have financial support for Gold OA publishing should see our routes to funding open access for more information about the support we provide.
Our APCs are sensitive to the needs and requirements of different subject fields. Our standard APC for 2024 is £2,320 / US $3,450 (plus any applicable taxes). Some of our journals charge lower APCs – or do not charge APCs at all – often as part of a specific arrangement with a publishing partner. For information about a specific journal’s APC pricing, please check the journal’s “fees and pricing” page, which can be found under the “author instructions” section of the “journal information” tab on the journal’s home page.
For a complete list of which CC licences are offered by which journals, please check this spreadsheet.
Key points about our APCs
- Our APCs are calculated to contribute to the costs associated with the publication process from peer review of the submitted manuscript, through to copy-editing and typesetting, to online hosting and dissemination of the published article. The costs associated with producing print issues are not included.
- We refund APC payments if we do not meet our promises to you. See below for our APC refund policy.
- We believe that journals should publish articles based on the quality of the work rather than the authors’ ability to pay. See our routes to funding open access for information about how we can help authors who do not have financial support for APCs.
- It is possible to pay an APC to make an existing article Gold OA retrospectively. Contact the journal in which the article was published to set this process in motion.
APC refund policy and procedures
Once a journal article has been published as Gold OA under a CC licence, we are unable to revoke this licence.
We will, however, refund APCs in whole or in part if:
- The amount charged for the APC is more than advertised on the journal homepage (with the exception of any applicable taxes).
- Waivers or discounts have not been applied where eligible and appropriately requested.
We will also refund APCs if after 30 days’ notice from a corresponding author we have not rectified any of the following:
- The Creative Commons licence applied to your article is not the licence you chose. (Please note however that is your responsibility to ensure that the licence you choose is line with your funder's requirements.)
- The full text of the article as published has not been deposited in PubMed Central (PMC), if it should and can be deposited, in line with your funder’s requirements and provided that the authors indicated funding from participating PMC funders and Europe PMC funders . Please note that PubMed Central does not currently allow us to deposit the full text of FirstView articles which are published online but which have not yet been placed in a journal issue.
- The article is not freely available on Cambridge Core.
If you believe you are eligible for a refund, please contact us as openresearch@cambridge.org