Scholarly Publishing & Research Impact

UTHSC Author Publishing Charge (APC) Discounts

The Health Sciences Library has negotiated APC and publication discounts for our UTHSC authors with the following publishers.

Please contact us for more information or assistance obtaining these discounts.

• Biomed Central (BMC) - University of Tennessee System authors receive an APC discount for articles published with BMC journals. You may find submission instructions here.
• BMJ Case Reports - Publication with BMJ Case Reports requires either an individual ($300/year) or institutional membership. UTHSC provides an institutional membership allowing all authors to publish traditional access for free. Authors can make their publications OA for an additional $522.
• MDPI - Authors receive a 10% discount on the APCs for any paper published in an MDPI journal. Note that only one discount through an IOAP scheme is permitted per paper, and the discount cannot be combined with other available discounts (e.g., discount vouchers, or society membership discounts).
• SAGE - SAGE offers a 10% discount to those publishing in one of their Gold OA journals.
• Springer hybrid open access journal titles are now eligible as of 2024 for a full APC waiver for corresponding UTHSC authors
  • Result of transformative/read and publish consortial agreement through Lyrasis
  • Value varies by journal title: $2,780 to $5,290 per article published
  • As of Dec. 16, 2024: 21 UTHSC authored articles approved and published OA in 2024 for total value of $88,650
  • Agreement runs 2024-2027
  • Does NOT include Nature branded journals OR fully OA journals
  • Eligible journals
    • Filterable/browzeable list of eligible journals by subject
  • For quickest OA waiver after article acceptance, select University of Tennessee Health Science Center as institution, then use:
    • @uthsc.edu email address
    • submit within campus IP range: 128.169.*.* 
    • other emails and off campus can and will work but approval may be delayed
  • If you are coauthor without a corresponding UTHSC author, check participating institutions to see if your corresponding author is eligible and let them know.
  • For more information contact: pgahn@uthsc.edu
• Taylor and Francis - T&F offers a 10% discount to authors wishing to publish OA in one of their many hybrid journals. Authors must use their UTHSC email to receive the discount. They will have the option to select the OA option after their submission has been accepted for publication.

Types of OA Publishing

The term "Open Access" covers a variety of publishing types and agreements. Listed below are definitions, from most to least "open."

1. Diamond OA - the full manuscript version is completely open and available, no author fee (APC)
2. Gold OA - the final version of the manuscript is made openly available immediately upon publication by the publisher, may or may not entail an APC
3. Green OA - a manuscript version, typically the pre- or postprint but not the publishers final copy, is made freely available in a repository such as the UTHSC Digital Commons or PubMed Central. If authors have signed a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA), publisher's policy will determine which version of an article can be archived in a repository. Most publishers allow some sort of green open access. Authors can check their CTA for this information.
4. Hybrid Journal - a type of journal that allows authors the option to publish their manuscript OA if desired, typically for a much higher APC than full OA journals. Other submission will remain behind a paywall.
5. Bronze OA - the manuscript is made openly available only through the journal or publisher website. The author does not pay a publishing charge. However, the publisher retains the copyright and can stop the publications being freely available at any time. True Open Access publications have a specific licence (often a Creative Commons licence) that means the publication is irrevocably Open Access and the terms of use and reuse are clearly stated.

Manuscript Types

• Preprint - a manuscript draft that has not yet been peer-reviewed or formatted by a publisher, often distributed ahead of publication via preprint repositories such as arXiv
• Postprint - a manuscript that has been reviewed and corrected, but not yet undergone formatting and typsetting by the publisher
• Publisher's Version or Version of Record (VOR) - the final, formatted version of a publication that appears online or in the journal

Additional Resources

• SHERPA/RoMEO is a database of publisher copyright policies and self archiving information that authors can use to check which version they may be allowed to archive. Not all journals are in SHERPA/RoMEO and it isn't always current, so authors may also want to check the publisher's website as well.
• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) is another database indexing over 15,000 OA journals, their policies, author fees, copyrights, etc. Inclusion in the DOAJ is one way to assess an OA journal's legitimacy.
• OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) is a global listing of thousands of repositories with openly accessible content.
• Unpaywall provides a browser extension that will automatically search for legal OA versions of published manuscripts when you run into a paywall, typically linking to "Green" access versions deposited in repositories.

Bibliography

1. Ellison, T.S., Koder, T., Schmidt, L., et al. Open access policies of leading medical journals: a cross-sectional study. BMJ Open 2019;9:e028655. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-028655.

2. Schimmer, R., Geschuhn, K. K., & Vogler, A. (2015). Disrupting the subscription journals’ business model for the necessary large-scale transformation to open access. doi:10.17617/1.3.