Open Access

Mount researchers are able to receive discounts on Article Processing Charges (APC) for commercial publishers based on the Mount Library's subscription packages of databases. Please note that authors are required to pay the APC; the Mount Library does not pay for APC costs. The Mount Research Office does offer the Aid to Scholarly Publications & Communications grant, which can support payment of APC up to $1,500. See below for information on discounts for specific publishers:

American Chemical Society: $250 USD flat discount. APC discount is applied upon submission of manuscript. Authors must identify their institutional affiliation in order to qualify for the discount.

Cambridge University Press: As of January 1, 2022, MSVU corresponding authors can publish at no charge an unlimited number of articles open access in Cambridge hybrid and gold journals. The following five article types are included in this Open Access publishing agreement: Research Article, Review Article, Rapid Communication, Brief Reports, Case Reports. Authors must identify their institutional affiliation in order to qualify for the discount. As of 2024, the journal series "Cambridge Prisms" and "Research Directions" are also included in this deal for MSVU authors.

Elsevier: A 20% APC discount is applied to any articles submitted to eligible Elsevier journals (see the list of excluded journals below) between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023. The process to claim the APC discount is as follows:

• Upon final acceptance of an article for publication, the corresponding author receives an e-mail with a link to choose publishing options and will be asked to choose their institutional affiliation from an auto-complete form.
• For hybrid journals, once you've listed MSVU as your affiliated institution, you'll be presented with the option to publish as a subscription article, or to publish open access.
  • For gold OA journals, the article is open access by default.
• In both cases, you'll be presented with text which states that, as an author affiliated with MSVU, you'll receive a 20% discount on the APC.
• You will then be given the choice of license – CC BY (attribution) or CC BY NC ND (attribution, non-commercial, no-derivatives).
  • If you have questions about which license is best for you, please contact Lindsey.Maccallum@msvu.ca for more details about the copyright licenses.
• Once you've chosen a license and completed the remainder of the acceptance process, you (or whomever you've designated as receiver of the invoice) will receive an invoice with the discount included. Please allow five business days for this process.

PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine: publication fees automatically covered until 2023. Upon submitting a manuscript to either PLOS Biology or PLOS Medicine, be sure to list your institutional affiliation in the submission system; if the manuscript is accepted for publication, and you are the corresponding author, or if all authors of the manuscripts are members, your publication fees are automatically covered. If the corresponding author is not a member, but at least one of the manuscript’s co-authors is a member, you’ll receive a 25% discount towards the non-member fee. 

After submission, corresponding authors receive an estimate from a billing system, Copyright Clearance Center, indicating the expected publication fees based on the current membership status of each author. 

Royal Chemistry Society: MSVU authors are eligible for a full waiver of APC in gold and hybrid OA journals from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2027. 

SAGE: Mount authors can publish OA with no APC in over 900 SAGE Choice journals, or receive a 40% discount on APC when publishing in a SAGE Gold OA journal. Please see the documents linked below for instructions on how to apply the APC discount. Note that there are specific journals excluded from this discount: A Current Bibliography on African Affairs; Abstracts in Anthropology; American Sociological Review; California Management Review; Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews; Contexts; Developmental Child Welfare; Feminist Review; Handbook of Practice Management; Index on Censorship; InnovAiT; International Political Science Abstracts / Documentation Politique Internationale; Journal of Health and Social Behavior; Journal of the Intensive Care Society; Pain News; Phi Delta Kappan Magazine; Scandinavian Journal of Surgery; Social Psychology Quarterly; Society and Mental Health; Sociological Methodology; Sociological Theory; Sociology of Education; Sociology of Race and Ethnicity; and Teaching Sociology.

Taylor & Francis: 25% discount in T&F Open Select journals until the end of 2026. To use the discount on T&F Open Select journals, an author can submit an article and choose the open access publishing option. When the APC is generated, authors can select their institution 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. 

Wiley Publishing: MSVU authors pay no APC in hybrid journals published by Wiley until the end of 2024. Declare your institutional affiliation when submitting an article and confirm in Wiley Author Services after your article has been accepted for publication to have your APC covered. See the link below for more resources and detailed workflows depending on the type of journal in which your article will be published. 

Author resources and explanatory documents: