Publication Charges

Information on PNAS article processing charges and publication licenses available is on this page.

Article Processing Charges

PNAS depends, in part, on the payment of article processing charges (APCs) to finance its operations. Papers are accepted or rejected for publication and published solely on the basis of merit. For articles that publish beginning with volume 121, please see the APC and license structure below. PNAS will grant waivers for authors who do not have funding to cover APCs (for example, in mathematics and astronomy, or from lower-income countries). Articles that publish in volume 120 will have the 2023 APC structure.

Regular research articles:

	APC	Available Licenses
Delayed open access	$2,750	CC BY-NC-ND
Immediate open access	$5,300 for corresponding authors from institutions with current-year site licenses (compared to our $5,800 regular fee)	CC BY-NC-ND or CC BY

Brief Report articles. $2,425 per article with either a CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND license. All Brief Report articles are immediately open access upon publication.

All PNAS articles, regardless of their license, are free within six months of publication.

Publication charges may be paid by credit card, check, or wire transfer. On receipt of the publication estimate, authors may log into the author billing system to review their charges. Email questions regarding billing and payment of APCs to [email protected]. Submit requests for waivers of charges to [email protected].

Licenses for PNAS Articles

Users are advised to check each article for its publication license and corresponding reuse and distribution policies.

PNAS offers two Creative Commons licenses: CC BY-NC-ND and CC BY. Please visit the respective websites for information on license terms.

The standard PNAS license has been discontinued beginning with articles published in volume 119 (2022). Information on the terms that apply to articles that published with this license can be found here: standard PNAS License terms.

Open Access Policy

All PNAS articles are free to read within six months of publication, without a subscription, and PNAS automatically deposits the version of record in PubMed Central for the authors. Authors who choose the immediate open access option can have their articles made freely available immediately upon publication. The following content is freely available upon publication:

• Front Matter
• Special Features
• Classics
• Editorials
• In This Issue
• Corrections
• Retractions
• Retrospectives
• Editorial Expressions of Concern
• At the National Academies
• Nobel papers

Open access articles are published under a nonexclusive License to Publish and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) or a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Some funders and institutions have explicit open access and license requirements. Authors are advised to confirm these requirements with their funding or institutional representatives to ensure compliance or to request policy waivers. Changes to license selections, or open access status, after publication may not be possible.

PNAS operates on a breakeven basis and must generate sufficient revenue annually to cover all operating expenses. PNAS is prohibited from retaining a surplus or maintaining cash reserves. More information about PNAS’s financial governance can be found here. Since 2004, PNAS has offered green open access to everyone: Authors may deposit their accepted manuscript in their funding body’s archive or designated noncommercial institutional repository, under the same license as the published article, provided that a link to the published article in PNAS is included. Authors may make their deposited manuscripts publicly available six months after publication or immediately on publication if the article was published in PNAS under the immediate open access option.

PNAS offers an immediate open access option. Note that Plan S-funded authors may not be able to use Plan S funds to pay for open access fees. If Plan S-funded scientists do not have funds available, PNAS will grant waivers for the CC BY fee on a case-by-case basis.

In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, PNAS continues to make relevant content free to access. Any data or preprints shared ahead of submission of research articles relevant to the outbreak will not preempt publication in PNAS. Please read the full statement here.

PNAS also participates in the following open access initiatives:

• All content, regardless of license, is automatically deposited by PNAS in PubMed Central. Articles that publish with the delayed open access option are free within six months of publication on PubMed Central. Articles that publish under an immediate open access option are free to read immediately.
• Articles published in PNAS are compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy.
• PNAS participates in CHORUS and supports the CHORUS Principles.
• Articles published in PNAS are sent to the Open Access Switchboard so that funders and institutional administrators are notified of publication milestones.
• All PNAS articles are freely available in 124 lower-income countries.

Authors Rights and Permissions

Rights and permissions

For volumes 1–89 (1915–1992), the author(s) retains copyright to individual articles, and the NAS holds copyright to the collective work.

For volumes 90–105 (1993–2008), the articles are copyright NAS.

For volumes 106–119 (2009–2022), except for open access articles submitted beginning September 2017, the author(s) retains copyright to individual articles, and the NAS retains an exclusive license to publish these articles and holds copyright to the collective work.

For articles published under either a CC BY-NC-ND or CC BY license beginning September 2017, the NAS retains a nonexclusive license to publish.

Visit the Permissions FAQ for information about PNAS copyright and self-archiving guidelines. See the PNAS listing on Sherpa RoMEO.

PNAS authors do not need permission for the following cases:

1. to use their original figures or tables in their future works;
2. to make copies of their articles for their own personal use, including classroom use, or for the personal use of colleagues, provided those copies are not for sale and are not distributed in a systematic way;
3. to include their articles as part of their dissertations; or
4. to use all or part of their articles in printed compilations of their own works.

The full journal reference must be cited and, for articles published in volumes 90–105 (1993–2008), "Copyright (copyright year) National Academy of Sciences" must be included as a copyright note.

Requesting permission

For permission to reuse material in volumes 90–118 (1993–2021) that published under the exclusive PNAS License to Publish, requests should be sent to [email protected] and must include the following information about the requestor and the material:

1. your full name, affiliation, and title
2. your complete mailing address, phone number, and email
3. PNAS volume number, issue number, and issue date
4. PNAS article title
5. PNAS authors’ names
6. figure/table number or portion of text to be reprinted

Requests must also include the following information about the intended use of the material:

1. title of work in which PNAS material will appear
2. authors/editors of work
3. publisher of work
4. retail price of work
5. number of copies of work to be produced
6. intended audience
7. whether work is for nonprofit or commercial use

Permission is not required to use original figures or tables for noncommercial and educational use (i.e., in a review article, in a book that is not for sale) if the article published under the exclusive PNAS License to Publish. Please include a full journal reference and, for articles published in volumes 90–105 (1993–2008), include "Copyright (copyright year) National Academy of Sciences" as a copyright note. Commercial reuse of figures and tables (i.e., in promotional materials, in a textbook for sale) requires permission from PNAS.

Reproducing full articles (whether physically or electronically) published under the exclusive PNAS License to Publish requires permission from PNAS and will also incur an article reprint fee. Sharing the URL of a PNAS article does not require permission and will not incur any fees.

In September 2017 (partway through volume 114), PNAS started offering CC BY-NC-ND and CC BY licenses. PNAS is not authorized to grant permission for material published under either license, as the authors hold copyright. However, depending on the intended use, permission may not be required at all. Users are advised to check each article for its publication license and corresponding reuse and distribution policies.

As a courtesy, please notify PNAS authors when reusing their work, regardless of the license to publish. Use of PNAS material must not imply any endorsement by PNAS or NAS.

Text and data mining are permitted for noncommercial institutions with an active institutional site license to PNAS for internal noncommercial research purposes. Other requests should be sent to [email protected].

PNAS cannot supply original artwork. Such requests should be directed to the article’s corresponding author (contact information is available in the article’s footnotes).

Additional permissions requests

Copyright Clearance Center offers the following pay-per-use options for PNAS material:

• use in electronic or print course materials (i.e., coursepacks, classroom handouts, posting on an academic institution intranet)
• delivery via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) or other document delivery
• photocopying for general business or academic use
• sharing content electronically (i.e., sending in an email, posting on an intranet or extranet)

Pay-per-use orders can be submitted directly through the Copyright Clearance Center website.

Authorization to photocopy items for the internal or personal use of specific clients is granted by the NAS provided that the proper fee is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center.

For questions regarding any of the above, including permission to photocopy beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the US Copyright Law, contact:

Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive Danvers, MA 01923; Phone: 978-750-8400; Fax: 978-750-4770; Email: [email protected]

License to publish

Signing the license to publish grants NAS nonexclusive rights to publish the work in PNAS.

PNAS Pilot Transformative Agreements

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has select pilot transformative agreements with institutions and consortia to provide immediate public access to PNAS, the peer reviewed journal of the NAS. These agreements offer a sustainable open access framework and provide the following benefits to researchers at participating institutions:

• Researchers have unlimited access to all content published in PNAS, including subscription-only content, immediately after publication.
• Research articles by corresponding authors based at participating institutions are published immediate open access under a CC BY license, directly deposited to PubMed Central (PMC) and to Europe PMC, and archived in LOCKSS/CLOCKSS and Portico.
• Depending on the agreement, authors within the institution qualify for reduced or no research article publication fees, with no limit to the number of articles that may be published immediate open access.

University of California Publish-and-Read transformative agreement

California Digital Library has signed a Publish-and-Read transformative agreement with the NAS on behalf of the University of California. The agreement, which benefits researchers at all University of California campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, runs from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2026.

Under the agreement, corresponding authors from any University of California institution, including the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, may publish open access in PNAS for a discounted total rate of $3,225 per article, with no separate article page charges. A CC BY license is applied to the article by default; authors may opt to change to CC BY-NC-ND.

Authors may also opt out of using an open access license to publish their article and choose subscription-only access instead. These authors will pay PNAS article charges as outlined in the Article Processing Charges.

How to take advantage of this agreement:

• The corresponding author must be affiliated with a University of California campus, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, or the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the author must publish under this affiliation.
• The author should use their institutional email address when submitting their paper, if possible. The author will be asked to validate their institution if a validated institution is not already linked to the author’s user profile. A University of California institution or either the Lawrence Berkeley or the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories must be indicated.
• If invited to submit a final revision, the author will receive a request to sign the license to publish once the revision is received. The corresponding author must choose either a CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND license to qualify for this agreement.
• Authors who publish in PNAS always retain copyright ownership and have the ability to set the copyright owner as their institutions when required.

Max Planck Society Publish-and-Read transformative agreement

Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) has signed a Publish-and-Read transformative agreement with the NAS on behalf of the Max Planck Society. The agreement, which benefits corresponding authors affiliated with the Max Planck Society, runs from May 1, 2023, to April 30, 2026.

Under the agreement, corresponding authors from any Max Planck Society institute may publish open access in PNAS without incurring individual article processing charges (APCs). A CC BY license must be selected. Authors who opt out of publishing their articles with an open access license should contact [email protected] for guidance on covering the PNAS charges for their articles.

How to take advantage of this agreement:

• The corresponding author must be affiliated with an institution participating in this pilot agreement, and the author must publish under this affiliation.
• The author should use their institutional email address when submitting their paper, if possible. The author will be asked to validate their institution if a validated institution is not already linked to the author’s user profile.
• If invited to submit a final revision, the author will receive a request to sign the license to publish once the revision is received. The corresponding author should choose a CC BY license to qualify for this agreement.
• The article must be accepted for publication in PNAS between May 1, 2023, and April 30, 2026.
• Authors who publish in PNAS always retain copyright ownership or have the ability to set the copyright owner as their institutions when required.

PNAS and Funder Mandates

All authors who publish in PNAS under a CC BY license retain copyright ownership for their work, along with the right to post their accepted manuscript under the same CC BY license. PNAS makes all published articles available through PMC and Europe PMC at the close of each weekly issue.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Authors whose research was funded in part or in whole by the Gates Foundation may comply with the Gates Foundation open access policy as follows:

• Include the following acknowledgment in your manuscripts submitted for publication to PNAS:

  "This work was supported, in whole or in part, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [grant number]. Under the grant conditions of the Foundation, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License has already been assigned to the Author Accepted Manuscript version that might arise from this submission."

• Choose a CC BY license for your article. Note that the Gates Foundation does not permit you to use their funds to pay the article processing charges (APCs) associated with publishing open access in PNAS.
• Include a data availability statement with your article that describes where any primary data, associated metadata, original software, and any additional relevant materials necessary to understand, assess, and replicate the reported study findings in totality can be found. Make this data freely available on publication. PNAS requires a data availability statement for all published articles. Learn more about data availability statements at PNAS. Learn more about Gates Foundation data availability requirements.

HHMI

Authors whose publication results from research conducted in HHMI laboratories may continue to pay their PNAS APC from their HHMI budget through December 31, 2022.

The Wellcome Trust

Authors may comply with the Wellcome open access policy by including the following statement in their submission, which will be included in the published article:

“This research was funded in whole or in part by the Wellcome Trust. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.”

Wellcome Trust authors should also select a CC BY license for their PNAS article, which ensures that their article will be made freely available upon publication. Note that Wellcome does not permit authors to use their funds to pay the APC associated with publishing open access in PNAS.