Two publishers worth reading closely on fees
Cambridge has a refund commitment most authors never hear about. Pensoft publishes numbers that look like prices and are not. Both matter before you submit.
Cambridge University Press
Standard gold APC £2,610 / $3,655 (charged after acceptance, excluding tax); individual journals vary, and some charge less or nothing under publishing-partner arrangements. Waiver routes include institutional open-access agreements and the Cambridge Open Equity Initiative.
The refund clause. Cambridge refunds an APC in whole or part if a waiver or discount was not applied where you were eligible and had appropriately requested it — or if the amount charged exceeds the APC advertised on the journal's homepage. If you were charged in full after asking for a waiver you qualified for, that is a refund you can claim, not a loss. Contact openresearch@cambridge.org.
Source: cambridge.org open research, verified 2026-08-23. If you were overcharged, the appeal letter is the place to start.
Pensoft
Pensoft offers discounts and waivers across its portfolio for authors in low- and middle-income countries, graduate and PhD students, retired scientists, and independent researchers; each journal states its own policy.
What are NOT its prices. Under Plan S transparency, Pensoft publishes an average cost per article by workflow — €250, €600, €750. These are internal cost breakdowns, not article processing charges, and we do not list them as prices. A journal's actual APC is on that journal's own site and varies, because society owners may sponsor authors or add a surplus.
Source: pensoft.net/open-access, verified 2026-08-23.