Alternatives to Article Processing Charges

To comply with the foundation’s Open Access policy, grantees need to post a preprint or deposit their author accepted manuscript in PubMed Central (PMC). Neither of these routes has a cost to the grantee.

The 2025 open access policy does NOT restrict where and how grantees can publish their work once they have posted a preprint. If a grantee chooses to publish their funded research in a journal that charges Article Processing Charges (or APCs), the foundation will no longer pay these fees for submissions after January 1, 2025.

Payment alternatives to explore:

• See if your institution, or your co-author’s institution, has a publisher agreement or funds set aside for open access publishing
  
  
• Check if you, or your co-author, has another funding source for the fees
• Ask the publisher for an APC waiver
  
  
• Select another journal that does not use APCs – check the Directory of Open Journals (DOAJ)
  
  
• Contact the open access team, or your program officer, to see if any new models or publisher agreements will cover the fees

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Questions about Open Access? 

Please visit the Gates Foundation Open Access Policy site, https://openaccess.gatesfoundation.org/, or contact us at [e-mail].  Sign up for UNLOCKED - Open Access Newsletter to keep up with news and announcements.