Do I have to pay to publish open access?

The impression that open access means paying comes from the visibility of the gold route, where charges are advertised and can run into thousands. That is one business model, and it is not the only way to make work openly available.

The advertised charges do vary that widely. Article processing charges run from hundreds to thousands of dollars, and some legitimate journals ask US$5,000 or more, while the Directory of Open Access Journals lists thousands of titles that charge authors nothing (Leonard et al., 2021, p. 2).

The green route is the underused one. You publish in a subscription journal at no cost, then deposit the accepted manuscript, the version after peer review and before the publisher's typesetting, in your institutional repository or a subject repository. Most publishers permit this, sometimes after an embargo period, and it satisfies the open access requirements of most funders.

The two things to get right on the green route are the version and the timing. Publishers usually permit the accepted manuscript rather than the final published PDF, and they often specify an embargo. Your library will know both for a given journal and will usually do the deposit for you.

Diamond journals, funded by institutions or scholarly societies rather than by authors, exist in most fields and are often unknown to early-career researchers. They are worth asking a librarian about, because they publish good work and cost nothing.

What are the green, gold, and diamond routes?

Green means depositing your accepted manuscript in a repository, free to you, sometimes after an embargo. Gold means the published version is open on the journal's site, usually funded by a fee. Diamond means the journal is open access and charges neither authors nor readers.

Hybrid journals are a fourth category and the one to watch. They are subscription journals offering an open access option for a fee, and some funders will not pay charges to them, on the grounds that the publisher is paid twice.

Hybrid charges are also the higher ones. Across 1,117 medical journals in 29 specialties, the median charge was $4,248 at hybrid journals against $2,909 at fully open access journals, a difference significant at p<0.001, and the spread between fields was large, from a mean of $4,621 in hematology to $2,565 in primary care (Tocco et al., 2025, pp. 3-4). Note that this count excluded journals reporting $0 charges and diamond journals, so it describes the paid end of the market rather than the whole of it (Tocco et al., 2025, pp. 7-8).

Do not read the price as a quality signal. In that same set, impact factor and the share of open access articles together explained only 14.1% of the variation in charges among Q1 journals, with charges correlating weakly with impact factor and citation counts at r=0.38 and weakly negatively with the share of open access output at r=-0.28, which points to publisher size and market demand rather than better peer review (Tocco et al., 2025, p. 1). Leonard et al. make the matching point from the other direction, that a high fee on its own is not evidence a journal is predatory, and that the real warning sign is a journal that will not disclose its fees before submission (Leonard et al., 2021, p. 1).

Check your funder's policy before choosing, since several now specify permitted routes, licences, and embargo limits, and a paper published the wrong way can be non-compliant.

What are my options with no funding?

Four. Check whether your institution has an agreement covering the fee, which many do. Apply for the journal's waiver, which most legitimate publishers offer. Choose a diamond journal. Or publish in a subscription journal and deposit the manuscript, which satisfies most funder mandates.

Waivers are more available than most people assume and are routinely granted to researchers without funding, including doctoral students. Ask at submission rather than after acceptance, and expect a short form rather than an interrogation.

Waivers go routinely to authors in low- and middle-income countries and to authors who can show financial need, and most large funding agencies let you budget dissemination costs, including publication fees, into a grant application (Leonard et al., 2021, p. 2). The catch is documentation. Waiver terms are often vague on the journal website or only surface after acceptance, so confirm your eligibility before you submit, alongside the other routes that lower the bill, institutional publisher agreements, society partnerships, and dedicated grant funds (Tocco et al., 2025, p. 7).

Institutional agreements are the easiest win and the least advertised. Libraries negotiate deals that cover charges at large publishers, and many researchers pay fees their institution would have covered because nobody told them.

Ask the library before you submit rather than after acceptance. Some agreements only apply if the corresponding author is affiliated at submission, and that condition cannot be fixed retrospectively.