Open Access Publishing Discounts

Authors affiliated with the University of Ostrava can benefit from a number of discounts on open access publishing. These discounts are provided in the form of APC tokens, i.e., one-time full waivers of open access publishing fees, or long-term discounts from specific publishers or journals.

Which publishers offer discounts for open publishing?

Publishing using limited APC tokens

logo Elsevier logo Springer Nature logo Taylor & Francis logo Wiley

Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley have a limited number of APC tokens available, which are assigned to the University of Ostrava for one calendar year. APC tokens can only be used in selected, mostly hybrid journals.

Journals included in these publishers' collections may offer various types of open (Creative Commons) licenses. We always recommend consulting the website of the specific journal, especially for publications subject to project conditions.

Please note: An informative list of journals with discounts from these publishers is currently unavailable – we expect it to be delivered in February 2026.

Long-term discounts and unlimited open publishing

logo Sage logo BMJ

With these publishers, unlimited open publishing in hybrid journals is available. The process is automatic, and discounts for open publishing are not subject to individual approval. With SAGE, a 20% discount is also available for publishing in fully open titles.

The journals included in the BMJ collection are mainly licensed under CC BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial).

Please note: An informative list of journals with discounts from these publishers is currently unavailable – we expect it to be delivered in February 2026.

How to apply for an open publishing discount

Before applying:

  • Only corresponding authors affiliated with the University of Ostrava may apply. The publisher verifies the use of an institutional email address (@osu.cz) and the affiliation itself.
  • APC tokens can only be requested for journals included in the above lists. Other journals do not offer APC tokens for OU, even though they may belong to the same publisher.

How to apply for an APC token:

  1. If the above conditions are met, some publishers automatically send a request for an APC token after the review process is complete, without asking the author. Otherwise, the author may be asked if they are interested in open publishing and informed of the existing agreement between the publisher and the University of Ostrava.
  2. Before the request is reviewed, the author is asked for final confirmation of its submission by the Office for Research and Artistic Activities or the University Library.
  3. The request is accepted or rejected based on the current policy (see below).
  4. If the application is approved, the result is published openly without the need to pay the APC. If rejected, in the case of hybrid journals, the author is offered the option of paying the APC from other sources or publishing the result for a subscription fee.

Please note: If it ever happens that an APC token is offered to you in a fully OA journal, you will not have the option to publish your article under a subscription if the APC token request is rejected.

Conditions for granting an APC token

Tokens are always allocated to the University of Ostrava for the calendar year. At the beginning of the year, the UO collects information about research projects with mandatory open publishing. If you are experiencing problems with financing publication fees for your project with mandatory OA, please contact .

In other cases, the following application assessment policy applies:

  • Elsevier / Springer Nature / Taylor & Francis: For an application to be approved, the journal to which the article is submitted must be classified as Q1/Q2. The ranking is assessed according to the impact factor in any Web of Science category in which the journal is classified.
    • Applications that meet this condition are approved in the order in which they were received.
  • Wiley: Articles are not subject to the Q1/Q2 condition, and the approval process is based solely on the order in which applications are submitted.

Further information

For detailed information on transformation agreements and open publishing, please visit the website of the University Library of the University of Ostrava.

If you have any questions about open publishing, please contact us at  or use the Contacts page.


Updated: 19. 01. 2026