APC waivers in numbers
Every figure below is counted from policies read at the publisher's own site, with the date each was checked recorded on its page. Nothing here is estimated.
Counted 1 August 2026
The full count
| Figure | What it counts |
|---|---|
| 15 | publisher waiver policies recorded from primary sources |
| 6 | different rules about which author's country counts |
| 4 | external classification systems in use |
| 109 | countries appearing on at least one published list |
| 35 | countries where Wiley grants a full waiver and Taylor & Francis grants 50% |
| 2 | publishers out of 15 that publish a complete country list |
| 1 | publishers out of 15 that extend waivers to hybrid journals |
| 9 | publishers that require the author to ask |
| 12 | publishers supporting the Research4Life waiver guidelines |
What the numbers show
There is no common standard
Fifteen publishers use four external classification systems and apply six different rules about which author's country decides eligibility. Two publishers citing the same framework still publish different country lists: Elsevier's tiers cover 69 and 57 countries, Wiley's cover 77 and 28.
Transparency is the exception
Only two of the fifteen publish a complete country list. The rest state a rule and leave the list to be inferred, or hold it behind an eligibility checker that requires you to know your answer first.
Hybrid journals are almost entirely excluded
One publisher of the fifteen extends waivers to hybrid titles. For an author whose target journal is hybrid, the country list is usually irrelevant.
Voluntary guidelines exist but do not standardise anything
12 publishers support the Research4Life waiver guidelines — Elsevier, Springer Nature, Hindawi, Wiley, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, IOP Publishing, Canadian Science Publishing, Sage, Taylor & Francis, The Royal Society, SPIE Press. The guidelines were drawn up by a taskforce of research4life publisher partners, doaj, stm and yale university. They recommend transparency; they do not set the country lists, and signatories still use different ones.
Reuse this data
The comparison tables are published under CC BY 4.0. Attribute to JournalFees and link back. Machine-readable copies:
Suggested citation: JournalFees, APC waiver eligibility by country and publisher, 1 August 2026. https://journalfees.com/data/statistics/