Elsevier Open Publishing Program
Update October 15, 2025: open publishing program has been closed due to the exhaustion of the pool of 1,084 articles (for more information see Elsevier).
According to the agreement signed in 2025, articles accepted for publication in the current year after the agreement was signed were eligible for the program. The date of submission of the article to the journal was irrelevant. List of journals that were included in Elsevier’s open access publishing program in 2025.
The program is designed for correspondence authors affiliated with institutions that are covered by Elsevier’s national license and have set up an administrative account in the Elsevier Open Access Platform (EOAP) system to verify the affiliation of their authors. It is required that the correspondence author include this affiliation on the title page of the article, and it can be one of the correspondence author’s multiple affiliations listed in any order.
Detailed rules of the program operation are available on the website of the Virtual Science Library:
Journals and type of articles covered by the open publishing program
Program in 2025 included 1124 hybrid journals, see list (recommended browser: Microsoft Edge):
https://vls.icm.edu.pl/zasady/2025/Elsevier/czasopisma_elsevier2025_oa_08052025.xlsx
The program included the following article types: Case Reports, Data, Full Length Articles, Micro Articles, Software, Reviews, Replication Study, Short Communications, Short Surveys, Videos, Practice Guidelines i Protocols, see description of types.
Fees covered by the program
The only fee covered by the program was the Article Processing Charge (APC). Authors publishing under the program were exempt from the APC, which is presented by Elsevier in the Rights and Access form as a 100% discount. Catalog APC prices (without discount) are available on the publisher’s website, but this price list only provides information for the basic Full Length Article type, and does not take into account additional discounts to APCs that may be applied by editors. Binding APC price information for an article before and after the discount from the program is visible to the author as soon as the article is accepted for publication in the Rights and Access form.
Some journals charge additional fees, such as Page Charges, Manuscript Acceptance Fee (Submission Fee), or for additional services that may be requested by the author (prints, printed color drawings, etc.). These fees are not indicated on the Rights and Access form, where only the APC fee is indicated. Additional charges are billed between the journal and the author on a separate invoice. The Page Charges fee applies regardless of the open-access or subscription model of publication and, according to the March 2021 information, is applied by more than a dozen journals: list, but the author should check the current policy on the website of the respective journal.
Article submission for the program
Under the program, in 2025, an article could be published after it had been accepted for publication, provided that the program’s pool had not been exhausted. At the time of submitting the manuscript to the journal, the corresponding author could receive information from the publisher about a possible discount under the program, but this was only information about meeting the criteria for the program, not a guarantee of the availability of the fund. The corresponding author whose article had been reviewed and accepted for publication received a link to the Rights and Access form from Elsevier. The form required the name of the institution, which should correspond to the affiliation or one of the affiliations assigned to the corresponding author on the title page of the article. If the article was eligible for the program and the program pool was not exhausted at the time of completing the form, the form displayed the option to waive the APC fee. See the presentation of the form for program:
https://vls.icm.edu.pl/zasady/2019/Elsevier/Elsevier_Author_Journey_Poland_programA.pdf
Note: presentation is intended only for institutions eligible for Elsevier’s open publishing program and can be downloaded only from the IP numbers of SGGW or from IPs of other academic institutions registered in the Virtual Library of Science (WBN).
See the publisher’s website for supporting materials:
How do I complete the Rights and Access form?
If the author chose the open publication option, he also had to select the CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND license type in the rest of the form, and in some journals – CC BY-NC. It was the author’s choice, but it should be noted that the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY license is recommended in Plan S.
The corresponding author was not required to use the program and could choose traditional, usually free (without APC) publication of the article (the “subscription” option, which only applied to hybrid articles). Failure to use the open access option by the author did not result in any restrictions on access to the program in the future.
Verification of articles submitted to the program
After the author selected the option of open publication in the program, the article was sent for verification, after which the author received another email with information about the verification result.
Contact
Any questions regarding the program can be directed to support@elsevier.com and to the Virtual Library of Science: wbn@icm.edu.pl.
Contact at SGGW:
Open Science Department Main Library
PhD Agnieszka Adamiec, MSc Dominika Semeniuk, tel. 22 59 35 720; e-mail – otwartanauka@sggw.edu.pl