AMPPS Open Access FAQ

What is open access publishing? What does the change to open access mean for AMPPS?

Open access (OA) is a publishing model in which all articles and related content are available for free on the journal’s website immediately following the complete production and copyediting process. The conversion of AMPPS to OA means that all articles published in the journal in 2021 and beyond will be freely available to the public; there is no institutional subscription, APS membership, or other cost to access the article. All previously published articles that were not already publicly available will also be free to access as of January 1, 2021. Articles will be published under the terms of a Creative Commons (CC) license that allows for the reuse, distribution, and adaptation of the material in any medium or format, so long as it is accompanied by proper attribution. As part of the move to OA, AMPPS will move to an online-only, continuous publication format, and print issues of the journal will no longer be published.

What are the benefits of AMPPS converting to open access?

Free public access: All articles published in AMPPS are available at no cost without exception.

Impact: OA will enable all the content in AMPPS to be discoverable, or visible to search engines and other research tools. This will increase the impact of these articles, both in the sphere of academia and scientific research as well as in the public globally.

Author control: Publishing under a CC license gives the authors more control over the distribution and reuse of their work.

Funding compliance: The conversion to OA will also satisfy mandates from certain funders that require authors to publish work conducted with that funding in OA journals. Some funders also have a requirement that articles published using their funds be published under a CC license.

Will there be a cost to publish an article in AMPPS?

Each paper accepted for publication in AMPPS will incur an APC of $1,000. This APC does not depend on whether any or all authors are members of APS. The $1,000 APC does not cover APS’s actual publication costs; instead, APS will subsidize AMPPS articles. Although APS aims to keep AMPPS‘s APC at $1,000 as long as possible, against a backdrop of ongoing economic uncertainty, we will monitor and adjust to maintain the health of the journal.

How can authors obtain funding to pay for the APC?

Authors can utilize various resources to assist in covering the cost of the APC:

Funders: Authors may use discretionary funding or may have funding specifically allocated to pay APCs.

Institutions: Authors should check with their institutions to determine whether there are funds available to pay for the APCs.

Publisher agreements: SAGE has entered into several agreements with various consortia and institutions that cover the APCs for researchers at those institutions. Find out more on SAGE’s Open Access Agreements page.

Other sources: The OA Journal Funds website maintained by the Open Access Directory lists funding sources, including universities, research centers, foundations, and government agencies, that support OA journals, books, and other publications. The Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity maintains a list of institutions that are signatories of the compact and have committed to providing financial support to their faculty to cover costs related to publishing open access.

How will AMPPS support all authors regardless of funding availability?

APS will automatically give APC discounts to authors based in a Research4Life Group A or Group B country. Authors outside of these countries who lack funding from their institution, grants, or other sources to pay the APC may request a discount or waiver (AMPPS APC Waivers Policy). These requests will be processed by production staff following acceptance of the article; the journal editorial team is not involved in this process, which is entirely separate from the peer review of articles.

How will the change to open access affect the submission and review process?

Short answer: It won’t. Manuscripts will be subject to the same rigorous review process and will be assessed using the same editorial standards by the same editorial team. The only change to the submission process is that authors will be required to acknowledge that they understand the article will be subject to an APC should it be accepted for publication.

Where can I find out more information about open access at APS? More information is available in the announcement of the conversion of AMPPS to OA, APS President Shinobu Kitayama’s column in the September Observer, and the APS President’s Virtual Roundtable, “The Opportunities and Challenges of Open Access.”