Library Support for Open Access
McMaster University Libraries Investment in Open Access
McMaster University researchers are entitled to discounts on Article Processing Charges (APCs) in the following journals or journal packages as a result of memberships negotiated and paid for by the Library. Identify yourself as affiliated with McMaster and the CRKN Consortium to receive the discounts. More details about the CRKN agreements is available directly from CRKN's site.
APC Waivers: Publish your Article Open Access
- Cambridge University Press - Publish an unlimited number of articles as open access in Cambridge hybrid and gold journals at no charge. Corresponding authors must identify their McMaster affiliation.
- Canadian Science Publishing - As of January 2023, corresponding authors from McMaster can publish APC-free in the following five journals: Biochemistry and Cell Biology; Canadian Journal of Physics; Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology; Genome; and Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering. McMaster authors are also eligible for a 25% discount for publication in all CSP Hybrid journals. Authors must identify their McMaster affiliation at the point of article submission.
- IGI-Global - Six APC waivers per year are available to McMaster faculty whose works are accepted in an IGI Global publication. Faculty members will be notified that a waiver is available to them if they would like to publish their article as Open Access. Articles can be opened retroactively as well.
- Institute of Physics (IOP) - McMaster authors will be able to publish an unlimited number of their articles as open access in most IOP hybrid and gold journals for the duration of the CRKN agreement (2022-2024). Authors will be automatically recognized by affiliation.
- Microbiology Society Journals - McMaster's agreement covers all six of the Society's peer-reviewed monthly journals. Any article published in the journals where the corresponding author is affiliated with McMaster will be Open Access by default. There is no limit on the number of articles authors can publish during the term of the agreement (2022-2024).
- PLOS, including PLOS ONE - For the two-year period, February 1 2023-January 31 2025, McMaster authors will be able to publish an unlimited number of articles in the full PLOS suite of journals. For more on the submission process, check the PLOS FAQ for Authors or watch the video. Authors should use their @mcmaster.ca email when submitting.
- SAGE Journals - For the term of this CRKN agreement (2021-2023), McMaster authors can publish open access in over 900 SAGE Choice journals with no APC. A small number of titles are excluded. The fee waiver is applied automatically when authors identify their McMaster affiliation during the submission process. In addition, the agreement includes a 40% discount on the APCs on SAGE's gold open access journals.
- Wiley Hybrid Journals - As of January 15, 2023, McMaster corresponding authors are eligible for APC-free publication in Wiley's hybrid journals. Wiley's fully gold open access journals are not covered by this agreement and authors will continue to be charged full fees. Information on the submission process and journals covered is available from Wiley's information page for Canadian institutions.
Claim APC Discounts:
- American Chemical Society (ACS) - Receive a $250 USD flat discount upon submission of a manuscript. Authors must identify their McMaster affiliation in order to qualify for the discount.
- Elsevier Science Direct Open Access - For the term of 2021- 2023, authors affiliated with McMaster University will be granted a 20% discount on Elsevier’s APCs for both hybrid and gold OA journals. Cell Press, Lancet, and some other society-owned journals will be excluded. See a complete List of Titles Excluded from APC discount.
- MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) - Starting in March 2021, McMaster authors may receive a 10% discount on APCs when they publish their articles with MDPI.
- Royal Society of Chemistry - McMaster authors receive a 15% discount for publication in RSC hybrid journals. Authors must specify their affiliation when submitting.
- Taylor & Francis - Receive a 25% discount in Taylor & Francis Open Select journals. Authors must choose the open access publishing option. When the APC is generated, authors can select McMaster University from the drop-down menu, and the discount will be automatically applied. The author can select a Creative Commons license to sign once they accept the quote.
The Library provides funding to the following organizations to help support the open dissemination of content:
- Bioline International: quality research journals published in developing countries
- Erudit: Canadian social sciences and humanities journals
- Evolutionary Ecology Research: the world's oldest green-path open-access professional journal
- Héritage Project - Canadiana: digitized Canadian archival collections
- Knowledge Unlatched: open academic monographs
- Open Book Publishers: a leading, independent Open Access publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the UK. Also allows authors to publish open books with no Book Processing Charge (BPC).
- Open Library of Humanities: journals in a range of humanities disciplines
- PhilPapers: an index and bibliography maintained by the community of philosophers
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Our Library memberships support platforms, infrastructure, and open access initiatives more broadly.
- arXiv: an open access archive for scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.
- Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)
- Coalition Publi.ca: supporting Canadian journal publishing
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Library Publishing Coalition: an independent, community-led membership association of academic and research libraries and library consortia engaged in scholarly publishing
- ORCID Consortium in Canada (ORCID-CA)
- Public Knowledge Project (PKP): the leading developer of software such as Open Journal Systems (OJS) and Open Monograph Press (OMP)
- Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC): a global coalition committed to making open the default for research and education
For more information on journal publishing and library support, contact scom@mcmaster.ca