The ISME Journal is now Fully Open Access
The ISME Journal and the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) are thrilled to announce that The ISME Journal will be fully open access as of January 1, 2024.
All papers published in the journal will be free to read online without subscription. All articles accepted for publication will be published as open access under a Creative Commons license and will be subject to an Article Processing Charge (APC).
Find out more about the change, and why we’ve made it, below.
Why is The ISME Journal moving to fully open access?
Since it started publishing in 2007, The ISME Journal has been proud to highlight pioneering discoveries of wide appeal that enhance our understanding of functional and mechanistic relationships among microorganisms, their communities, and their habitats.
The International Society for Microbial Ecology believes open access publishing, in which articles are fully and freely available upon publications, supports our goals of serving the wider-community and seeking to help and promote microbial ecology in all aspects.
As part of our change of publisher to OUP, ISME are pleased to be able to transition the journal to publish fully open access. Open research and science bring great benefits to our research community and the wider world, from wider access to greater reusability and application of our science.
ISME is familiar with the open access publishing landscape from launching ISME Communications, a fully open access journal, in 2021, and we are excited to transition The ISME Journal to fully OA as well.
Does the licensing change?
Open access articles will continue to be published under Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).
The CC BY license means that people may use, distribute, adapt, and create from your manuscript, even for commercial purposes, as long as the credit is given for the original content.
What are the article processing charges (APCs)?
The charge for papers is €3500. The charge is discounted by 10% if the corresponding author is an ISME member.
Where do our APCs go?
As a society journal, apart from maintaining our editorial and society staff, most of our APCs go back to the ISME community to fund our annual and satellite meetings, student and postdoc prizes and travel funds. Please check the awards and meetings pages for more details. ISME actively supports, and is seeking to foster, a diverse community of scientists.
If I cannot afford the open access fee, what are my options?
As a society owned journal, The ISME Journal will endeavour to publish accepted papers irrespective of the ability of the authors to pay. Waivers will be granted to scientists working in developing countries and applications for a waiver from scientists in other countries will be considered on a case-by-case basis. If you would like OUP to consider a discretionary partial or full waiver, please visit this page to find a link for a waiver request form and instructions on who to send this to for consideration. Your application for a waiver request will be forwarded on to an independent adjudicator appointed by ISME. Please note that waiver applications must be submitted prior to acceptance for consideration.
OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.
I'm ready to submit, where do I go next?
Please refer to our instructions to authors and submission site for more information.
