iScience — publication fee
Verified list price, waiver route and what authors actually paid.
Checked 14 October 2026
The iScience article processing charge is $3,240 / €2,960 / £2,590 (list price, before tax), read from Elsevier's APC price list on 14 October 2026.
Fees at a glance
| Publisher | Elsevier |
|---|---|
| Model | gold OA |
| APC (list) | $3,240 / €2,960 / £2,590 |
| Median actually paid | €2,603 across 29 articles (2025) OpenAPC, incl. VAT, EUR — not converted from list price |
| ISSN | 2589-0042 |
APC vs proposed NIH limits
The $3,000 scenario applies only if the journal pays its reviewers and publishes the reviews. We do not verify that, so this journal is not shown as meeting it either way.
Proposed in NIH RFI NOT-OD-25-138 (30 July 2025). Not finalized as of 11 October 2026. Compared against this journal’s list APC in US dollars, as printed above — no currency is converted. What was proposed.
What authors actually paid, by year
OpenAPC records 29 iScience articles paid for by institutions in 2025, median €2,603 (range €1,505 – €3,660). Across the 8 years with at least five reported articles, the median moved from €2,651 (2018) to €2,603 (2025). These are amounts actually invoiced to institutions, in euros including VAT, so they reflect agreements, discounts and exchange rates — not the list price above.
| Year | Route | Articles reported | Median paid | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | gold OA | 13 | €2,651 | €1,856 – €3,184 |
| 2019 | gold OA | 16 | €2,619 | €1,606 – €3,223 |
| 2020 | gold OA | 29 | €2,590 | €763 – €3,209 |
| 2021 | gold OA | 38 | €2,600 | €1,131 – €3,172 |
| 2022 | gold OA | 82 | €2,600 | €692 – €3,316 |
| 2023 | gold OA | 149 | €2,820 | €705 – €3,549 |
| 2024 | gold OA | 100 | €2,761 | €1,410 – €3,539 |
| 2025 | gold OA | 29 | €2,603 | €1,505 – €3,660 |
Source: OpenAPC (ODbL), Bielefeld University Library; years with fewer than five reported articles are omitted. EUR, incl. VAT.
Waivers and discounts
Peer review, speed and licence
| Submission to publication | 27 weeks average stated by the journal |
|---|---|
| Peer review | Single anonymous |
| Licence | CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-ND |
| Author keeps copyright | No |
| Plagiarism screening | Not stated |
| Long-term preservation | CLOCKSS, PMC, Portico |
| Open access since | 2018 |
What iScience states in its record in the Directory of Open Access Journals, read 16 October 2026. The journal supplies these fields; DOAJ does not audit turnaround times. DOAJ record.
Sources for this page
- Fee
- legacyfileshare.elsevier.com
- Checked
- 14 October 2026
- Paid by year
- OpenAPC (ODbL), per-year medians, n≥5
- Review & licence
- DOAJ (CC0), read 16 October 2026
List prices before tax, waivers, agreements or country-tiered adjustments. Reconfirm on the publisher's page before submitting.
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