Publication fee waivers for authors in Iran

Neither Wiley nor Taylor & Francis lists Iran. Wiley removed it from its automatic waiver list between 27 July and 7 September 2026.

Wiley’s list read again 11 October 2026; other publishers checked 1 August 2026

Update, 3 October 2026: Wiley no longer lists Iran

Archived copies of Wiley’s waiver page show Iran on its automatic waiver list on 27 July 2026; by 7 September 2026 it had gone, and it is not on Wiley’s live page, which we read again on 11 October 2026. This page and the Wiley counts across the site now reflect that. On 3 October 2026 none of the eleven publishers we checked gave authors in Iran an automatic country waiver.

Iran is on neither Wiley’s nor Taylor & Francis’s list

—Wiley

—Taylor & Francis

Eligibility is read from the corresponding author's affiliation. Neither publisher applies these reductions to hybrid journals.

Every publisher we have checked

Publisher	For Iran	Hybrid	How it is applied
ElsevierResearch4Life	Not stated	No	Automatic
WileyResearch4Life	Not listed	No	Automatic
Taylor & FrancisWorld Bank income class plus a GDP ceiling	Not listed	No	Request required
Springer NatureWorld Bank income class plus a GDP ceiling	Not stated	Not stated	Request required
SageResearch4Life; some journals use World Bank income levels instead	Not stated	No	Automatic
IOP PublishingWorld Bank income class	Not stated	Yes	Automatic or on request
PLOSResearch4Life	Not stated	Not stated	Automatic through the Global Equity agreement
Oxford University PressResearch4Life, EIFL and government affordability metrics	Not stated	No	Automatic
American Physical SocietyResearch4Life	Reduced	Yes	Automatic
American Chemical SocietyWorld Bank income class	$965–$1,750	No	Automatic
AIP PublishingResearch4Life + World Bank	Case-by-case	No	Request required
FrontiersNeed-based	Request required	n/a (OA)	Fee support form
Copernicus PublicationsResearch4Life	No fee	n/a (OA)	Automatic
The Royal SocietyOpen Access Equity	No fee	Yes	Automatic
De Gruyter BrillWorld Bank + EIFL	30% off	Partial	Automatic
JMIR PublicationsWorld Bank	Discount (all authors)	n/a (OA)	Request required
KargerCountry income	Request required	No	Request required
ThiemeResearch4Life	50% off	No	Request required
Mary Ann LiebertResearch4Life Group B	50% off	No	Request required
Portland PressResearch4Life	Discount	Not stated	Request required
Emerald PublishingWorld Bank	50% off	No	Automatic
Wolters KluwerR4L / Institutional	Institutional only	Not stated	Institutional agreement
AACRWorld Bank	Partial	Yes	Geographic / case-by-case
eLifeCase-by-case	Typically covered	n/a (OA)	Request required
PensoftIncome + career stage	Varies by journal	n/a (OA)	Request required
Royal Society of ChemistryResearch4Life	Discretionary	Not stated	Request required
Company of BiologistsResearch4Life	Available	No	Automatic / institutional
Bristol University PressResearch4Life	Available	Not stated	Not stated
EDP SciencesResearch4Life	Available	Not stated	R4L alignment

Seven publishers publish a policy but not a country list. We record the rule and link to the source rather than guess which countries it covers.

No-fee journals published in Iran

DOAJ lists 1,100 open access journals whose publisher is based in Iran. 609 of them charge authors nothing — no APC and no other fees; 483 charge an APC; 8 do not state the fees. The longest-running no-fee titles:

Journal	Open access since	Weeks to publication
Acta Medica IranicaMedicine (General) · EN	1956	18
گیاه‌پزشکیAgriculture (General) · FA	1975	25
Journal of Advanced Materials in EngineeringMaterials of engineering and construction · FA	1987	12
نشریه پرستاری ایرانNursing · FA	1988	10
پژوهش و برنامه‌ریزی در آموزش عالیSpecial aspects of education · FA	1993	8

Publisher country, fees, start year and weeks from submission to publication as each journal states them in its DOAJ record (CC0), read 16 October 2026. Where a journal is published says nothing about who may submit, and a DOAJ listing is not an indexing or quality ranking; check each journal's author guidelines. Confirm the fee on the journal's own site before you submit.

Three things that catch authors out

The waiver follows the corresponding author, not the paper

If a co-author abroad is listed as corresponding, the reduction is lost — even when the research and every other author sit in Iran. At Elsevier it goes further: all authors must be in the same group, and a mix of Group A and Group B authors brings a full waiver down to 50%.

Hybrid journals are excluded almost everywhere

Few publishers extend waivers to hybrid titles: IOP Publishing and the American Physical Society say explicitly that theirs do. Elsewhere the reduction usually applies to fully open access journals only, or the policy does not say. In a hybrid journal you can still publish at no cost under the subscription route — the article simply will not be open access.

Two publishers make you ask

Wiley, Sage, Elsevier and PLOS apply the reduction automatically. Taylor & Francis and Springer Nature require a request at submission. An author who waits for the system to notice pays in full.

What authors in Iran can still use

Checked on publishers’ and national bodies’ own pages, 3 October 2026

Iran is not on the Research4Life eligibility list, so waivers that Elsevier, Sage and PLOS tie to Research4Life do not apply automatically. Iran is not on the country lists of Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature (including BMC), Oxford University Press or Cambridge University Press either.

Lower prices in two pilots

Springer Nature: in the 64 journals of its country-tiered pilot, authors in Iran pay 25% of the APC.
Elsevier: in its pricing pilot of about 300 gold open access journals, Iran is in the “upper-middle income 1” band and pays 45% of the list APC.

Ask for a waiver — before you submit

Springer Nature, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Frontiers and PLOS consider individual requests from authors who cannot pay. Taylor & Francis offers the request at the Services stage of submission. Wiley says it may waive fees where payment infrastructure is a practical barrier.

Sanctions and paying the fee

US sanctions rules allow publishing with authors in Iran: the general licence at 31 CFR 560.538 covers transactions “ordinarily incident to publishing”, and Iranian academic and research institutions and their staff are not treated as the Government of Iran under it. Paying is the harder part, because international banks do not transact with Iran. Elsevier says it may grant extra waivers where trade sanctions stop it receiving payment. Ask the journal how you can pay before you submit.

Checking a journal from Iran

ISC (isc.ac) keeps the list of cautionary and fake journals that the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology refers to. One of its criteria is charging authors for fast publication.
ISC’s DOR system (dor.isc.ac) gives Iranian articles an identifier where a DOI cannot be obtained.
IranDoc runs DOAJI, a directory of Iranian open access journals, and the Hamanandjoo plagiarism checker.
SID (sid.ir) and Magiran (magiran.com) index Iranian journals.

Free-to-publish journals from Iran

DOAJ lists 1,084 journals published in Iran; 607 of them charge neither an APC nor any other fee. Many Iranian journals charge in two steps — a non-refundable submission or review fee, then a fee on acceptance — so read the fee page before you submit.

Sources for this section

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Where the two lists disagree35 countries All countries110 profiles Publisher policies side by side48 policies How we check thisMethod Corresponding author changed after submission?Authors Which author counts for a waiverAnswer

Sources for this page

Wiley: Wiley — Open Access Waivers and Discounts — checked 1 August 2026
T&F: Taylor & Francis — Eligible countries — checked 1 August 2026
—: Fully open access journals. Hybrid titles are noted separately in the table.
—: Where a publisher does not publish a country list, we say so instead of inferring one.
No-fee journals: DOAJ journal records (CC0), read 16 October 2026

Compare publisher policies

Waiver rules differ between publishers — who counts as the eligible author, whether hybrid journals are included, and whether you need to apply or it happens automatically.

ALL PUBLISHER POLICIES →