By Yeo Pin Pin, Head, Research Services
In a joint initiative led by the Office of the Provost, the Office of Research and SMU Libraries, SMU faculty members, staff and students can get support for the Article Processing Charges (APC) when publishing in top-tier journals. The initiative took effect in April 2025.
The support for APC aims to enhance the global reach of SMU research and ensure its worldwide accessibility to a broader audience, beyond just academia and allow the research to be read by industry professionals, researchers from lower-income countries, and the general public. Research has shown that publications that are open access tend to have higher citations, known as Open Access Citation Advantage.
What are the criteria to obtain APC support?
- Article must be accepted in a journal that is ranked A or A* in the publication outlet lists published by the Office of the Provost, in consultation with schools.
- A SMU full-time faculty member is the corresponding author of the article. Alternatively, if a SMU student, research staff or administrative staff is the corresponding author, a SMU full-time faculty must be one of the co-authors.
- Declare that they do not have a research grant to cover the APC. SMU faculty members who have budgeted for APC in their research grants should use their grant instead.
Where to check the publication outlet list?
The list will be available on the intranet website of the Office of the Provost. The link will be provided when the files are uploaded.
The list is maintained by the Office of the Provost, in consultation with schools. There are plans to review the list periodically. For the schools where the list is still work-in-progress, the Open Access support will be available as soon as the list is finalised.
How to request for APC support?
Submit your request for APC support and upload your acceptance email from the publisher.
The Library will review your request and coordinate with you for the payment of the APC.
What is an Article Processing Charge?
Article processing charges (APC) are charged to authors to publish an article in either a gold open access (OA) or hybrid open access journal. APC covers the range of publishing services offered by the publisher and the cost of hosting the articles on the publisher website. After paying the APC, the published article is available to anyone with an Internet connection. For gold OA journals, an APC is required for all articles that are published in the journal. For hybrid journals, the author may choose to pay an APC to make their article open access. Articles where no APCs were paid are only available to institutions who have paid the subscription charges for their community to access the journals.
We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to get support to publish in high-impact and top-tier journals and make your paper open access on the publisher platform. We will be organising some face-to-face sessions to walk you through this new initiative.
