Open Access Publishing Discounts
UO authors have the opportunity to use the university's APC tokens, i.e. discounts or full waivers for Open Access publishing fees. The UO only has units of tokens available for most of the publishers included in the agreement, with one token covering a singular article, and as such, each token is subject to individual approval.
UO authors publishing with Sage are granted a 20% discount on publishing open access in hybrid or fully OA journals.
APC Token Eligibility Requirements
The following requirements must be met for a result to be eligible for an APC token request:
- The given result must be published in a journal that is included in the CzechELib consortium's transformative agreements. To check whether a journal you are considering publishing to falls within the agreement, you may utilise the Informative List of Journals with OA Publishing, available on the CzechELib website.
- When requesting an APC token, authors are linked to their institution via email. It is therefore necessary to utilise the OU staff email when communicating with the journal you are publishing to.
- In order to request a UO APC token, the result's corresponding author must be affiliated with the University of Ostrava.
Sending an APC Token Request
The process of sending the APC token request is as follows:
- After the article in question has gone through the review process, authors will either be presented with the option to request an APC token, or will be notified that the request has been sent out automatically. It is important to note that official APC token requests are always sent at this stage of the publishing process, as compared to requesting the token prior to the completion of the result, or retroactively after the result is published.
- Any submitted requests are received by staff at the UO University Library and//or the Office for Research and Artistic Activities. At this stage of the process, authors are prompted to officially confirm their request via email.
- If the request has not been withdrawn, it is sent to the vice-rector for research and artistic activities, who either approves or rejects it.
- If the request is approved, the result is published in Open Access without the need to pay the APC. If it is rejected, the author is presented with the option of using other sources to cover the APC, or publishing the result in 'closed' access (under a subscription fee).
The steps outlined above represent the only way to officially request the use of an APC token on behalf of the University of Ostrava.
Please keep in mind that APC tokens cover open access publishing costs only. Springer and Taylor&Francis offer additional publishing services, such as accelerated publication, which cannot be covered using APC tokens.
APC Token Approval Policy
Due to the limited number of APC tokens available to the University of Ostrava and its authors, each token request must be individually assessed and approved by the Vice-Rector for Research and Artistic Activities.
At the beginning of each calendar year, an analysis of research projects with mandatory open access is performed. During this analysis, information regarding planned publications and OA funding within the projects is collected from each faculty and institute and then compiled into a report to identify potential issues.
Should any problems arise with covering open access publishing costs on research projects with mandatory OA, it is recommended to contact the Office for Research and Artistic Activities using the e-mail address.
In all other cases, the following policy applies when assessing APC token requests:
- Springer Nature/Taylor & Francis: The article must be submitted to a journal falling within Q1 or Q2.
- APC token requests fulfilling this condition are approved on a first-come-first-served basis.
- Wiley: No quartile requirements, requests are approved on a first-come-first-served basis.
Updated: 03. 04. 2025
