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

Unlike some hybrid journals where the "free" option comes with page charges or color fees, JCI charges nothing for subscription-track publication. Zero. No page charges, no overlength fees, no color figure surcharges.

Your article goes through the same editorial process, gets the same DOI, appears in the same issue, and is indexed identically in PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The only difference is that readers need a library subscription to access it during the embargo period.

After 6 months, JCI deposits the full-text article in PubMed Central for free public access. This is automatic. You don't need to do anything. This 6-month embargo is shorter than many journals (Nature and Science impose 12 months), which makes JCI more compatible with certain funder mandates even without paying for gold OA.

ASCI launched JCI Insight in 2016 as a fully gold open access companion to JCI. Every article in JCI Insight is immediately free to read.

The APC for JCI Insight runs $4,100 to $5,450, roughly $1,200 less than the parent journal's gold OA fee. 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, the editorial team may offer a transfer to JCI Insight. This is common. The transfer preserves your reviewer reports, so you don't start from scratch.

Because ASCI is a small society publisher, it doesn't have the massive Read & Publish infrastructure that Springer Nature or Elsevier operate. There are no transformative agreements covering hundreds of institutions.

That said, some institutional support exists:

• NIH-funded authors: If your research is NIH-funded and your institution has an agreement with ASCI, the APC may be partially or fully covered through the institution's open access fund.

• Individual university OA funds: Many US research universities (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UC system) maintain open access funds that reimburse APCs for their faculty. JCI's APC falls well within typical fund limits ($3,000-$6,000).

• No consortium-level deals: Unlike Springer Nature's DEAL or Jisc agreements, ASCI hasn't negotiated national-level Read & Publish agreements. This means coverage depends on your specific institution's policies.

Check your library's open access funding page before assuming you'll pay out of pocket. Most well-funded US research institutions have mechanisms to cover an APC in this range.

ASCI offers APC support for authors who can't cover the cost:

Automatic waivers: Corresponding authors based in Research4Life Group A countries (low-income nations) receive full APC waivers for both JCI and JCI Insight.

Partial discounts: Authors in Research4Life Group B countries (lower-middle-income) receive significant discounts, typically 50%.

Hardship waivers: Authors at any institution can request a case-by-case waiver based on financial hardship. ASCI states that these requests are handled by the business office, separate from editorial decisions, and don't affect peer review.

No membership discounts: Unlike AAAS (which offers a 4% member discount for Science Advances), ASCI membership doesn't come with a publication discount. Membership is elected, not purchased, so this model wouldn't apply the same way.

JCI's hybrid model gives authors flexibility for most major funder requirements:

JCI's 6-month embargo is a significant advantage for authors on the subscription track. Because NIH requires PMC deposit within 12 months and JCI does it automatically at 6 months, NIH-funded authors don't need to pay the APC to satisfy the public access mandate. This is a genuinely author-friendly policy.

For Plan S compliance, you'll need to choose gold OA and select the CC BY license. JCI supports both CC BY and CC BY-NC for open access articles. Make sure you pick the right one during production.

JCI is refreshingly clean on fees. No page charges, no color charges, no submission fees. But there are a few things to be aware of:

• License selection timing: You choose your license (CC BY vs CC BY-NC) during the production process after acceptance. If you select CC BY-NC and your funder requires CC BY, correcting this after publication is painful. Get it right the first time.

• Data deposition: JCI requires that underlying data be deposited in appropriate public repositories (GEO for genomics, ClinicalTrials.gov for clinical data). The repositories themselves are free, but preparing data for deposition takes time.

• Figure revision costs: If the production team identifies issues with your figures that require re-creation, you handle this yourself. JCI doesn't charge for figure rework, but it can delay publication.

• Reprints: Physical reprints are available at extra cost. Most researchers don't need these, but some institutions still request them for tenure files.

JCI's green OA policy is more generous than most commercial publishers:

• You can deposit the accepted manuscript (post-peer-review, pre-formatting) in institutional repositories immediately upon acceptance.
• The final published version is deposited in PMC automatically after 6 months.
• No restrictions on preprint posting. You can post to bioRxiv or medRxiv at any stage.

This combination of short embargo plus automatic PMC deposit plus liberal preprint policy makes JCI one of the more author-friendly journals on access issues, even if you don't pay the APC.

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? Publish via subscription track for free. JCI deposits in PMC automatically after 6 months. You're compliant.
2. Plan S funder (Wellcome, ERC, UKRI)? You'll need gold OA. Budget $5,300-$5,700 and check your institution's OA fund.
3. Paper not quite JCI level? JCI Insight is a strong fallback at a lower APC with the same editorial infrastructure.

Getting into JCI is the hard part. The acceptance rate hovers around 8%, 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
• A subscription option or green OA (preprint + embargo) satisfies your funder
• Another OA journal with a lower APC would provide similar visibility