Low-Cost and Free Open-Access Journals

Open access does not have to mean a large bill. Many medical journals publish open access at low cost or at no cost to authors. Here is how the models work and how to find them.

How open-access journals are paid for

  • Author-paid (APC) journals charge a fee after acceptance.
  • Free-to-author journals, sometimes called diamond open access, charge neither authors nor readers. Costs are covered by a society, institution, funder or publisher.
  • Waivers and discounts are offered by some APC journals, often for authors in lower-income countries or without funding.

How to find low-cost options

  • Check the journal's fees page directly, including any charges for figures, pages or withdrawal.
  • Search the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which records whether a listed journal charges an APC.
  • Look at journals run by professional societies in your specialty.
  • Ask your library whether your institution has publishing agreements that cover fees.

What a low price should still include

A low or zero fee is only good value if the journal still does the essential work: real peer review, a DOI for every article, a clear open licence such as CC BY 4.0, and an honest statement of where it is indexed.

A free option

ASIDE Case Reports charges nothing to submit or publish, for any author from any country. Articles receive a Crossref DOI and are published open access under CC BY 4.0 after double-anonymous peer review. The journal is not currently listed in DOAJ, PubMed or Scopus.

Submit your case report, free Why publish with ASIDE Case Reports →