During this period, a total of 417 articles were made immediately open access via the gold route at a total cost of £271,020.27 (excluding other publication costs).

Points of interest:

• 417 articles published with immediate open access is the highest number ever approved via Queen’s open research team, almost double the second highest article total of 212 from 2019-20.
• The £4,834 paid to the ‘hybrid’ journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was the most expensive APC.
• 255 articles were made open access via Queen’s ‘Read & Publish’ agreements. That number is equivalent to 61% of the total articles being made immediately open access during the period.

Read & Publish agreements or ‘Transformative agreements’ are a way for publishers to transition their subscription journals to full open access. The costs of open access are part of an overall Queen's payment covering both subscriptions and open access publishing; therefore, Queen's authors will not have a fee to pay when their paper is published.

The full APC expenditure report can be viewed on Queen’s Research Portal.

If you would like to know more about Gold Open Access, please visit the open access LibGuide or email openaccess@qub.ac.uk