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What are open access fees?

Open access fees are article processing charges (APC fees) collected by publishers. In open access journals (full open access, gold open access), authors pay an APC fee to have their article published, as the content of these journals is openly available to everyone without subscription fees. In hybrid journals (hybrid open access), authors can publish their article open access by paying a separate APC fee. Otherwise, the content of the journal is only available to readers who have paid a subscription fee, meaning the publisher collects fees from both authors and readers. 

Open access agreements

Open access agreements are so-called Read & Publish agreements which provide researchers the possibility to access scientific journals and collections, and publish articles open access without open access fees (APC fees) for authors. Some of the agreements include only a discount on APC fees.

If a journal is not included in Aalto University open access agreements

Apart from open access agreements, Aalto University does not have a central open access fund. If you publish in a journal which is not covered by our agreements or only a discount on the fee is provided, please consult your department for the payment of the open access fee.

Which open access fees do funders reimburse?

Calls opened before 1 January 2021 

EU and Research Council of Finland (former Academy of Finland) reimburse article processing charges as research costs of the project.

Calls opened after 1 January 2021

Funders committed to Plan S initiative, such as EU and Research Council of Finland (former Academy of Finland), encourage to publish in fully open access channels.

• Research Council of Finland: costs of ensuring open access to scientific publications published under (article processing charges (APC fees) required by the Plan S compliant journals that support immediate open access) can be covered by basic funding / included in the overheads of sites of research.
• Horizon Europe: only APC fees in full open access (gold open access) publication channels are eligible for reimbursement as direct project costs.

Diamond open access

Diamond open access refers to full open access journals and platforms which do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Often, these journals are smaller in terms of publication volume, and many of them are published by research organizations or learned societies.

In 2022, an international  was prepared, with the aim to support and further develop diamond open access publishing model.  Plan S organisations, including Research Council of Finland (former Academy of Finland), support this action plan. 

You can search for open access journals that do not charge APC fees ("journals without APCs") in the DOAJ database.

Diamond open access publishing in Aalto University

In 2023, we identified diamond open access journals in which Aalto's researchers have published in 2018-2022. According to the survey, approx. 2 % of Aalto's peer-reviewed scientific journal articles are published in diamond open access journals. The results of the survey are indicative.

Savolainen, E., & Seitsonen, K. (2023). . The 18th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing.

Diamond open access publishing and results of the survey were also discussed at a webinar held as a part of Aalto's Research Data Management & Open Science Training:

Open access fees paid by Aalto University

 service includes open data of article processing charges (APC fees) paid by institutions outside transformative open access agreements. In Aalto, this data is based on combining data from (publication data) and individual open access fees (APC invoices). OpenAPC displays information of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles at publisher, journal and article level, and data is updated four times a year. Other publication types are excluded from OpenAPC. 

In 2024, Aalto paid open access fees of journal articles worth of almost 500 000 EUR. 

National monitoring of total costs of open access publishing

Total costs of open access and scientific publishing to Finnish institutions are monitored on a national level as part of the monitoring of open science and research in Finland. Currently, the monitoring covers e.g. subscription fees, transformative open access agreements and article and book processing charges (APC fees and BPC fees). For article processing charges, the monitoring utilizes data available in .

Based on the data from 2023, Finnish institutes paid publishers over 25,1 million euros for transformative open access agreements and an additional 4,6 million euros for separate article processing charges (APC fees).

Contact information

For any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Open Science and ACRIS team (acris@aalto.fi).