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Financial benefits

SpringerOpen is able to offer a flexible financial model to suit you, your journal, and the benefits you hope to achieve for your members. Based on our competitive article processing charges (APC), which are charged on editorial acceptance of the article, we will choose a model that best suits your journal's needs.

Develop your journal with financial flexibility

As a society or publishing partner you may choose to support your developing journal by sponsoring all or part of the APC costs. SpringerOpen can offer discounted APCs to your authors or members with the society's options including:

  • Covering the full APC for all articles
  • Providing a membership benefit by covering some or all of the APC for members' articles.
  • Covering the APC for invited content such as commissioned reviews

The arrangements can be handled flexibly over time so that a society can provide support for the journal for an initial period and then scale down this support over time to make the journal cost-neutral or revenue-generating for the society.

Generating a revenue stream for your society

SpringerOpen's standard APC is set at a basic level that allows us provide high level services and to continue to invest in our technology and to allow us to continue to innovate.

In the open access publishing model APCs are the primary source of revenue. Some publishing partners may require revenue from the journal to cover journal-related running costs or to generate income that is used to support other activities. This can be achieved by setting the APC above our standard level, with the resulting additional revenue generating an income for your society.

Covering the APC

SpringerOpen Member Institutions

Together with BioMed Central, SpringerOpen offers a Membership Program to institutions so that their authors receive an automatic discount or full coverage of the APC, depending on their institution's membership scheme.

We have the largest and best established open access Membership Program in the world with over 450 Member Institutions from more than 50 countries.

For journals where there is no central coverage of the APC, authors arrange payment of the APCs, which are typically covered by their institution or funding body.

APC waivers

Where author-payable APCs are in place, SpringerOpen operates a waiver policy to ensure that APCs are not an obstacle for authors without sufficient funding.

Low income countries

The APC is waived automatically for authors from close to 100 countries with low per-capita income. Authors from other countries can request reductions and full waivers during the submission process, and decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, separate from, and independent of, the editorial process. SpringerOpen absorbs the cost of such waivers.

Invited content

SpringerOpen enables Editors to invite a number of articles each year for which no APC is payable. This supports the publication of content such as commissioned reviews, which in turn benefits the development of the journal.

Please contact info@springeropen.com if you have any questions or if you would like to discuss an open access journal with us.