Open Access

As a KUMC affiliate, you have access to the following waivers and discounts when publishing Open Access articles with the publishers below. These open access funding initiatives are made possible through joint agreements between KU Lawrence and KU Medical Center. 

• Company of Biologists - KUMC corresponding authors whose manuscripts are accepted for publication during the 2023-2025 agreement term will have their APCs waived in the fully open access journals Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open and in the hybrid journals Development, Journal of Cell Science, and Journal of Experimental Biology. 
  • Accepted articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license.
  • Affiliation with KUMC is determined by the corresponding author’s email used at the point of submission.
  • There is no cap on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.
• Elsevier - KUMC corresponding authors whose manuscripts are accepted for publication during the 2023-2025 agreement term are eligible for: 
  • 10% discount on APCs for an unlimited number of articles published in eligible fully open access Elsevier journals. 
  • Waived APCs for approximately 265 articles per year published in eligible hybrid Elsevier journals (see searchable list).
  • Cell Press, Lancet, and some society journals are excluded from this agreement. 
  • Accepted articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license.
  • More information is available at Elsevier's KU site. 
  • Check out our blog post discussing how the first 18 months of the agreement have gone. 

• MDPI - 10% discount on APCs via the MDPI Institutional Open Access Program for any manuscript where at least one author is affiliated with either KU Lawrence or KU Medical Center. Participation in this program is free to KU Libraries & Dykes Library.
• PLOS - Free publication for articles accepted in either PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, or PLOS Sustainability and Transformation via our participation with PLOS’ Community Action Publishing Model. The Libraries pay a flat fee for four years (2021-2024), which waives APCs for KUMC corresponding authors.
• Sage - KUMC corresponding authors whose manuscripts are accepted for publication during the 2024-2026 agreement term are eligible for a 20% discount on APCs in fully open access Sage journals. More information, including a list of eligible titles, is available at the Sage/KU agreement site.

If you have questions, please email us at rsm@kumc.edu.

Effective July 1, 2024, KUMC has allocated all remaining funds and are no longer receiving applications. Please see above for alternate open access funding available to KUMC authors.