JMIR Publications Open Access Agreement

In January 2020, University of California (UC) and JMIR Publications announced that they had entered into an open access publishing agreement that will make it more affordable for UC authors to publish in JMIR’s family of open access journals, including its flagship title, Journal of Medical Internet Research. JMIR publishes more than 30 journals, all of which are fully open access.

In brief, the UC libraries are providing funding to help cover open access publishing fees for UC authors who publish with JMIR Publications. This agreement has two goals: (1) to support UC’s mission as a public university and advance the global shift toward sustainable open access publishing by making more UC-authored publications open to the world, and (2) to make the author choice to publish with a native open access publisher an affordable and attractive option.

Agreement Basics
Article Payment Process
Resources
FAQ

Agreement Basics

JMIR Publications charges authors whose articles are accepted for publication a fee in order to cover the costs of publishing its journals (JMIR calls this charge an “article processing fee” or APF). Under the UC agreement, the UC libraries will pay at least the first $1,000 of the APF for all articles with a UC corresponding author that are accepted or submitted for publication between December 23, 2019 and December 31, 2023. If there’s any remaining balance due on the APF, JMIR’s payment system will ask UC authors if they have grant funding available to cover the balance. (This cost-sharing model is designed to enable the UC Libraries to stretch their available funds and help as many authors as possible.) If an author does not have grant funds to cover that difference, the UC libraries will pay the entire APF on their behalf, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish in JMIR’s open access journals.

For more information, see the “Agreement Basics” section of our FAQ.

Article Payment Process

Once an article with a UC corresponding author is accepted for publication in a JMIR journal, the publisher will charge the first $1000 of the article processing fee(APF) to the UC libraries. For APFs exceeding $1000, the author will be asked to pay the remainder if grant funds are available, or to submit a request form to JMIR for full coverage if grant funds are not available. JMIR will then charge the full APF to the UC libraries. This transaction will be handled directly between UC libraries and JMIR; authors do not need to contact their campus library to request funds.

See the “Impact for Authors” section of our FAQ for additional details.