Publication fee waivers for authors in Pakistan

Wiley applies a 50% reduction for corresponding authors in Pakistan. Taylor & Francis does not list Pakistan at all.

Publisher policies checked 1 August 2026

Pakistan is covered by Wiley, not by Taylor & Francis

50%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 Pakistan	Hybrid	How it is applied
ElsevierResearch4Life	Not stated	No	Automatic
WileyResearch4Life	50% off	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 Pakistan

DOAJ lists 202 open access journals whose publisher is based in Pakistan. 96 of them charge authors nothing — no APC and no other fees; 104 charge an APC; 2 do not state the fees. The longest-running no-fee titles:

Journal	Open access since	Weeks to publication
JISR on ComputingInformation technology · EN	2003	24
JISR Management and Social Sciences & EconomicsEconomic theory · EN	2003	56
Market ForcesCommerce · EN	2005	20
Business ReviewBusiness · EN	2006	18
Soil & EnvironmentAgriculture (General) · EN	2006	4

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 Pakistan. 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 Pakistan can use

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

Pakistan is in Research4Life Group B, so publishers that follow Research4Life give discounts rather than full waivers.

Automatic reductions

Wiley: 50% in fully open access journals.
Elsevier: 50% in fully open access journals when every author is from a Group B country, or from a mix of Group A and Group B countries.
Sage: 50% in gold open access journals.
Oxford University Press: 25% in fully open access journals.
Cambridge University Press: open access fully funded in its gold and hybrid journals (Open Equity Initiative).
PLOS: free in PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation for authors without external funding.

Pilots and requests

Springer Nature is not on its waiver lists for Pakistan, but authors pay 25% of the APC in the 64 journals of its country-tiered pilot, including some BMC journals.
Elsevier’s pricing pilot (about 300 gold open access journals) charges authors in Pakistan 20% of the list APC.
Taylor & Francis: not on its country lists; a discretionary request is possible at submission.
MDPI has no country-based waiver. Frontiers offers partial fee support by application.

HEC journal categories

HEC’s current Journals and Publications Policy (2024, Version 2.0, amended from 5 November 2025) has three categories, W, X and Y. There is no Z category any more.

W: Web of Science core collection (SCIE, SSCI, AHCI).
X: Web of Science ESCI, plus Pakistani Scopus journals that meet extra criteria.
Y: includes DOAJ-indexed journals that are not in Web of Science or Scopus.

To check a Pakistan-based journal, use HEC’s list of recognised national journals valid from 1 April 2026 to 31 December 2027; the HJRS site (hjrs.hec.gov.pk) was unavailable when we checked. HEC does not recognise a journal that is on the Cabells predatory list. Recognised journals may charge fees if they disclose them, and the NRPU grant budget template allows a journal publication fee of up to Rs 50,000.

Free-to-publish journals from Pakistan

DOAJ lists 192 journals published in Pakistan; 98 of them charge neither an APC nor any other fee.

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 →