Journal of Clinical Investigation APC and Open Access: Society Publishing With a Price Tag to Match

JCI has no subscription track. Effective with the January 4, 2022 issue, JCI is a Gold Open Access journal in which all content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution, and authors retain copyright under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).

There is no charge to submit, and JCI's fee table lists only the publication fee. JCI is indexed in PubMed/Medline, Scopus, and Web of Science, among others.

JCI deposits published research articles in PubMed Central, and articles published with a CC BY license are freely available there on the publication date, without embargo.

JCI Insight is the gold open access companion to JCI, published by the same society. Every article in JCI Insight is immediately free to read.

The APC for JCI Insight is $5,000 for a Research, Clinical Research and Public Health, or Resource and Technical Advance article from non-ASCI members, $800 less than JCI's $5,800 fee for a Research article. JCI Insight has a broader scope than JCI. It publishes clinical and translational research that may be more specialized or incremental than what the flagship accepts.

Key differences between the two:

If your paper doesn't land at JCI, JCI Insight editors may screen it and invite you to transfer. When a paper is transferred after peer review, the JCI reviews go with it, and Dual-Journal Submission routes reviewed papers to JCI Insight with the existing reviews.

JCI's fee pages do not describe institutional or Read & Publish agreements. They do say that requests for publication fee discounts are considered on a case-by-case basis. Outside support depends on your funder and institution:

• Funder and grant budgets: Check whether your funder or grant budget allows publication fees before you submit.

• Individual university OA funds: Many research universities maintain open access funds that reimburse APCs for their faculty; check your library's limits against JCI's $5,800 fee.

Check your library's open access funding page before assuming you'll pay out of pocket.

JCI's fee table includes lower fees for some authors, and discounts are considered case by case:

Member and awardee rates: An ASCI member in good standing who is the responsible party/corresponding author pays $5,600 instead of $5,800 for a Research or Clinical Research and Public Health article ($2,400 instead of $2,500 for a Research Letter). ASCI Council Young Physician-Scientist Award (YPSA) and Emerging-Generation Award (EGen) awardees pay $5,400 and $2,250 in those categories.

Discounts on request: JCI says requests for publication fee discounts are considered on a case-by-case basis.

Letters to the Editor: The Letter to the Editor category has a $0 fee.

JCI's open access model meets the funder requirements it lists:

JCI deposits published research articles in PubMed Central on authors' behalf, and says this satisfies the NIH Public Access Policy and similar funder requirements. Authors do not need to submit their accepted articles to PubMed Central separately.

For Plan S compliance, no extra choice is needed: all JCI articles since the January 4, 2022 issue are published under CC BY 4.0, and authors retain copyright. If your funder has special license requirements, JCI asks you to list them during submission.

JCI's fee table is simple: there is no charge to submit, and the table lists no page or color-figure charges. But there are a few things to be aware of:

• License: Articles are published under CC BY 4.0 and authors retain copyright. If your funder has special license requirements, list them during submission.

• Data deposition: JCI requires that large gene expression, high-throughput sequencing, and proteomics data sets be deposited in public repositories (GEO for genomics, ClinicalTrials.gov for trial registration). The repositories themselves are free, but preparing data for deposition takes time.

• Figure revision costs: If JCI staff find that your figures do not meet Journal guidelines, they may request revised figures, which could delay the decision on a manuscript. JCI's fee table lists no charge for figure rework.

JCI's self-archiving and preprint policies are permissive:

• JCI says authors are permitted to post the final published version of the manuscript in institutional repositories.

• JCI deposits published research articles in PMC automatically, and CC BY articles are freely available there on the publication date.

• JCI says authors are permitted to post manuscripts on bioRxiv and medRxiv, and it does not consider research manuscripts posted to a community preprint server to be prior publications.

This combination of no embargo plus automatic PMC deposit plus a permissive preprint policy makes JCI author-friendly on access issues.

For clinical and translational researchers, JCI remains one of the top-tier targets. The cost decision is straightforward:

1. NIH-funded, no Plan S requirement? JCI deposits published research articles in PMC for you, which JCI says satisfies the NIH Public Access Policy. Budget for the publication fee.

1. Plan S funder (Wellcome, UKRI)? JCI says it meets cOAlition S requirements and is fully compliant with Wellcome and UKRI policies. Budget $5,800 for a Research article (non-ASCI members) and check your institution's OA fund.

1. Paper not quite JCI level? JCI Insight is a strong fallback at a lower APC ($5,000 for a Research article), from the same society.

Getting into JCI is the hard part. JCI's journal metrics page reports a 9.5% accept rate (June 2025 to May 2026), and the editors look for translational significance that connects basic findings to clinical outcomes. Before you submit, make sure your manuscript meets that bar. You can Journal of Clinical Investigation submission readiness check to identify gaps that might trigger a desk rejection at this level.

For more on how open access costs vary across the biomedical landscape, see our guide to Nature's APC or the full journal publishing fees overview.

Worth paying if:

• Your funder mandates open access (check Plan S / cOAlition S requirements)

• An institutional Read & Publish agreement covers the fee

• Open access visibility meaningfully benefits your research area

• The APC fits within your grant budget

Consider alternatives if:

• The APC is a personal out-of-pocket expense

• Your funder accepts green OA (preprint posting), which would mean a different journal, because JCI publishes everything as gold open access

• Another OA journal with a lower APC would provide similar visibility

For a manuscript-specific signal before you submit, run a JCI submission readiness check.

Or see example reports before you finalize.