May 2025 update: Due to budget cuts in the Libraries, the OA articles fund has been suspended for FY26 and the funds for OA monographs have been reduced. (Note: we still have publisher OA agreements. See below for details.)

The MIT Libraries’ OA fund give MIT researchers up to $1,000 towards publication fees in peer-reviewed, open access journals.

We also support MIT authors who want to publish their monographs open access.

MIT Libraries signed a three-year agreement (to December 2025) with AIP Publishing for MIT corresponding authors. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible, and articles must be published open access in a hybrid journal. The agreement includes 50, 51, 53 OA articles for each of the three years.

Workflow for corresponding authors in journals from AIP Publishing: When you submit an article, choose MIT as the institution name; then choose the option that says, “I wish to publish Open Access as part of an Institutional agreement.” This option should show MIT as having an agreement with AIP to support OA publishing. More information on the AIP site.

Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu

MIT Libraries subscribe to “ACS All Publications,” which means ACS members who are currently affiliated with MIT get a $250-$750 discount on ACS “AuthorChoice.” AuthorChoice makes the final published version of articles open access immediately or after 12 months. More information

The MIT Libraries has an open access agreement with ACM that allows MIT authors to make ACM articles freely available at no cost to them. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible.

Under the agreement, ACM will also automatically deposit the manuscripts of all MIT co-authored articles into MIT’s institutional repository, DSpace. And the agreement includes rights for computational (text or data mining) access to the ACM Digital Library. More information on the ACM site

Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu

MIT Libraries’ membership provides current MIT authors with a 15% discount on article processing fees for BMC journals and SpringerOpen journals. More information

MIT Libraries’ subscription to ECS Plus provides current MIT authors with free, unlimited credits to publish articles open access.

To take advantage of this, choose Open Access in the submission process:

If authors wish to have their paper published OA if accepted, they should request Open Access Publication, select the desired CC license (ECS offers CC-BY and CC-BY-NC-ND), and check the box for affiliation with an ECS Plus subscriber institution. If the paper is accepted, there will be no invoice; the system will confirm the affiliation and waive the article processing charge.

More information on publishing OA with ECS Plus (PDF from ECS)

MIT Libraries support of the journal eLife provides current MIT authors with free, unlimited publishing.

To take advantage of this, enter MIT as your institution on the submission page. Once there appears a green checkmark next to “Edit Funder/Institution,” you will see a note on the publication fee page that the fee is covered by a deal. If you miss this step, staff should catch it during eLife’s checks.

Contact the eLife editorial team with questions.

More information on publishing and peer review with eLife

MIT Libraries’ membership provides currently affiliated MIT authors with a 15% discount on article processing fees for Frontiers journals.

MIT Libraries is an institutional member of MDPI. Our membership provides current MIT authors with a 10% discount on article processing charges for MDPI journals, and discounts on book publishing charges. MDPI publishes open access journals and books in the sciences.

MIT Libraries has two open-access publishing agreements with the nonprofit publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) that allow MIT authors to publish in all PLOS titles with no publishing fees. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu

Author instructions for PLOS Biology & PLOS Medicine (from PLOS)
Author instructions for all other PLOS journals (from PLOS)

MIT Libraries’ site license provides current MIT authors with a discount on the optional open access processing fees. APCs for immediate OA are “$4,975 for corresponding authors from institutions with current-year site licenses (compared to our $5,475 regular fee)” (as of September 2022).  More information on the PNAS site

MIT Libraries’ membership provides current MIT authors with a 25% discount on article processing charges for any Royal Society journal, including their open access journal and their open access option for traditional journals called EXiS Open Choice. More information on the Royal Society site

MIT Libraries’ agreement includes full access to RSC’s journals and OA publishing with no fees for authors. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Author guide flyer from RSC (pdf)

Background on our RSC agreements: In early 2020, the MIT Libraries and the Royal Society of Chemistry extended our 2018 read & publish agreement.

Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu

MIT Libraries signed a three-year agreement (to December 2026) that allows MIT corresponding authors publishing in hybrid Sage journals to make their articles open access at no cost to them.

Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Only hybrid OA journals are part of the agreement; those that charge subscription fees as well as fees to publish an article OA.

More information: PDF from Sage with workflow + Sage website

Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu

Current MIT-affiliated corresponding authors whose papers are accepted in Science Advances are eligible for a 15% discount on APCs. As the authors proceed through the payment process for the APC, there should be a pop-up for applicable discounts, one of which is the affiliation discount. The dropdown list should auto-populate with MIT or Massachusetts Institute of Technology either based the corresponding author’s affiliation or once they start typing into the free text search field. Once their institution is chosen, it should auto-populate the eligible affiliation discount.

Also: As of January 2022, MIT authors no longer need to obtain a waiver of MIT’s open access policy when publishing in Science journals.

NOTE: Nature journals are not part of this agreement. Only Springer and Palgrave journals are included.

MIT Libraries signed a four-year agreement (to December 2025) that allows MIT corresponding authors publishing in about 2,000 Springer or Palgrave journals to make their articles OA at no cost to them. The agreement includes 101, 105, 108, 112 OA articles for each of the four years.

Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Not all journals are part of the agreement.

More information on the Springer site

SpringerOpen journals are not included in the Springer agreement. However: MIT Libraries’ membership provides current MIT authors with a 15% discount on article processing fees for SpringerOpen and BMC journals. More information on the Springer site

Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu

MIT Libraries signed a three-year agreement (to December 2027) that allows MIT corresponding authors publishing in Taylor & Francis open access & open select journals to make their articles OA at no cost to them. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. Authors will be asked to select MIT from a drop-down list.

Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu

MIT Libraries has an agreement (to December 2027) that allows MIT corresponding authors to make primary research and review articles open access at no cost to them. Authors must be currently affiliated with MIT to be eligible. To qualify, articles must be published in either a fully open access or a hybrid journal and must have been accepted on or after 1 January 2022.  More information on the Wiley site:

• Author workflow guide for OA APC funding request submission for hybrid journals
• Author workflow guide for OA APC funding request submission for fully open access journals

Questions: oaauthorpubworkflow@mit.edu