Flat Fee Agreements

Streamline and simplify publication fee support for your authors

Transparent, predictable pricing
Eliminate author fees
Option to maintain author grant funding
Reduce administrative overhead

Simplify Open Access publication fees

The PLOS Flat Fee (FF) model streamlines and simplifies managing publishing fees (APCs) by shifting the cost from individual articles to an institutional annual flat fee. Institutions who participate in this model gain access to a suite of services from PLOS and provide unlimited publishing opportunities for their researchers across six PLOS journals.

HOW IT WORKS

We use your institution’s historic publication activity and the current publication fees to calculate an annual flat fee that covers the cost of unlimited publishing opportunities (pending peer review) for your authors in the following PLOS titles: PLOS Complex Systems, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS ONE, and PLOS Pathogens.

Our institutional partners benefit from a suite of dedicated services including custom reporting; an advisory role in the development of future PLOS products, services, and business models; and dedicated customer service and support.

Publishing Terms of Service

All PLOS partnership models are subject to PLOS’ Master Publishing Terms of Service. Institutions or consortia that wish to partner with us should contact us for further information.

BENEFITS

Reduced administrative overhead

Flat Fees make it easier for institutions to support their authors’ Open Access publications through a single, annual invoice to your institution. Ensuring that all your authors — irrespective of ability to pay — can submit to PLOS journals, these agreements lock in the current APC rate making them valuable investments over the agreement term.

Unlimited publications, 6 PLOS journals

Institutional support ensures all authors have equal access to make their work Open at PLOS, regardless of individual funding resources. Your annual flat fee payment automatically covers author publication costs across six of our journals, giving your authors the flexibility to choose which journal is right for them. It also include any new titles or article types launched during the agreement term — effectively making them “free” for your authors.

Deeper insights and transparency

We believe in giving our partners more insight into publication activity and cost, to continue driving solutions that benefit the entire scholarly community. Under the Plan S framework, we’ve committed to sharing our journal costs and fees transparently. We also provide custom reports and data tools to help you dig deeper into submissions, publications, funding and data sources for your authors

RETAIN AUTHOR GRANT FUNDING STREAMS

The Flat Fee model gives our partners the flexibility to continue utilizing the author’s grant funding stream in the payment ecosystem–without additional administrative overhead. Institutions have the option to include an Author Surcharge for each publication, effectively subsidizing library support with existing funding streams. You choose the portion of the publication cost authors are required to contribute. PLOS authors who are unable to meet the fee are eligible for our fee waiver program.

For more information, or to become a participating institution please contact us below.