PNAS APC and Open Access: A Tiered Pricing System That Rewards Planning

PNAS has negotiated pricing agreements with several major institutions and consortia. These are some of the best deals in academic publishing:

The UK Jisc deal is remarkable. UK-based corresponding authors at Jisc member institutions can publish in PNAS with the immediate OA APC fully covered through 2027. No out-of-pocket cost. This is one of the most generous national-level agreements for any journal outside the Springer Nature portfolio.

The UC system deal at $3,355 represents a 33% discount off the standard immediate OA fee. If you're at a UC campus and publishing in PNAS, this is automatically applied.

For US researchers outside these specific agreements, most R1 universities maintain open access funds that can cover PNAS APCs. The fee falls well within typical fund limits. Check with your grants office or library.

PNAS has a unique feature not found at any other major journal: the contributed track. Members of the National Academy of Sciences can contribute up to 2 papers per year through a special editorial pathway.

In the contributed track, the NAS member (who must be a coauthor) selects reviewers and manages the review process, then submits the paper with the reviews to the PNAS editorial board. The board can accept, reject, or send for additional review.

This track has been controversial. Critics argue it allows NAS members to select friendly reviewers. PNAS has responded by requiring that contributed papers go through the same quality checks as regular submissions, including statistical review and plagiarism screening.

From a cost perspective, contributed papers follow the same APC structure as regular submissions. The track doesn't save you money, but it can speed up the review process significantly.

Here's a cost that catches people off guard: for non-OA articles, PNAS charges $575 for each page beyond 12. This applies to the formatted, published version, not your submitted manuscript.

A 16-page published article, for example, would incur $2,300 in page surcharges on top of any OA fee. For lengthy papers with extensive methods sections and supplementary figures that end up in the main text, this can be a real budget item.

The workaround: move detailed methods and supplementary figures to the supporting information section, which doesn't count toward the page limit. Most PNAS authors do this routinely.

Note that Brief Reports and articles with immediate OA don't incur page surcharges. The charge only applies to non-OA standard articles that exceed 12 published pages.

PNAS offers waiver support, though it's less formalized than what larger commercial publishers provide:

Automatic waivers: Corresponding authors from low-income countries (as defined by the World Bank) receive full APC waivers.

Partial waivers: Authors from lower-middle-income countries receive reduced rates.

Hardship waivers: Case-by-case waivers are available on request. Contact the PNAS business office after acceptance. As with most journals, waiver requests are handled separately from editorial decisions.

NAS member benefits: While contributed papers don't have waived APCs, some NAS members have institutional arrangements that cover publication costs.

In practice, PNAS is a society journal operated by the National Academy of Sciences for the benefit of science. The editorial team is generally responsive to genuine hardship cases.

PNAS offers enough flexibility to satisfy most major funder mandates, but the route depends on which option you choose:

The delayed OA option satisfies NIH and NSF requirements but fails Plan S. If you have a Plan S funder, you must choose immediate OA ($4,975-$5,475) and select CC BY licensing.

PNAS supports CC BY, CC BY-NC, and CC BY-ND licenses for immediate OA articles. Plan S funders require CC BY specifically. Don't select the wrong license during production.

PNAS has more potential fees than most journals. Here's what to track:

• Page surcharges: $575/page beyond 12 pages for non-OA articles. This is the biggest hidden cost. Push supplementary content to supporting information to stay under the limit.
• Color figures: No extra charge. Color is free in both print and online.
• Submission fee: None.
• License confusion: PNAS offers three Creative Commons license options. Picking the wrong one for your funder is a common and costly mistake.
• Site license verification: If your institution has a PNAS site license, make sure the system recognizes your affiliation. The $500 difference between licensed and unlicensed rates is worth verifying.
• Supporting information: Free to include, but large datasets must be deposited in external repositories (Dryad, Figshare, etc.), which may have their own costs for very large files.

PNAS rewards authors who understand its pricing system and plan accordingly. Here's how to make the best choice:

1. Budget-conscious, NIH-funded? Delayed OA at $2,575. Your paper hits PMC in 6 months. NIH is satisfied. You save $2,400+.
2. Short, focused findings? Brief Reports at $2,275 with immediate OA included. Best value in the PNAS system.
3. Plan S funder? Immediate OA ($4,975 with site license). Check if Jisc or your institution covers it.
4. UC system author? $3,355 for immediate OA. The institutional deal saves you $1,620.

The editorial bar at PNAS is high but accessible. The journal publishes across all scientific disciplines and values broad significance. If your work connects to policy, public health, or cross-disciplinary themes, PNAS is receptive.

Before submitting, make sure your manuscript demonstrates that breadth. A paper that's excellent but narrowly technical may be better suited to a specialty journal. If you want an honest assessment of whether your paper fits the PNAS bar, run a free readiness scan to identify issues that lead to desk rejection.

For a comparison of how other multidisciplinary journals handle APCs, see our Science (AAAS) cost breakdown or the Nature APC guide.