Science Advances APC and Open Access: The Only AAAS Journal Where You Pay to Publish
Science Advances charges $5,450 for gold open access. AAAS member discounts, institutional deals, and full waivers for developing nations. Complete cost guide.
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Every other AAAS journal runs on subscriptions and costs authors nothing. Science Advances breaks that pattern entirely. It's the one AAAS title where you will write a check (or more likely, charge a grant), and the amount is $5,450. That's the price for gold open access publication in a multidisciplinary journal that sits just below the flagship Science in the AAAS hierarchy.
The $5,450 APC explained
Science Advances is a fully gold open access journal. There's no subscription track, no paywall option, no way to publish for free. Every article is immediately and permanently free to read, and the APC funds that access.
Component | Amount |
|---|---|
Base APC | $5,450 |
With AAAS member discount (4%) | $5,232 |
With UC system discount (10%) | $4,905 |
With Finnish consortium discount (15%) | $4,633 |
Hinari A & B country authors | $0 (full waiver) |
The APC is charged at the rate in effect on your submission date, not your acceptance date. This is unusual and matters for budgeting. If AAAS raises the price between when you submit and when your paper is accepted, you pay the lower rate from submission. Most publishers lock the price at acceptance, so this policy actually benefits authors during periods of rising costs.
Payment is processed through RightsLink (Copyright Clearance Center) after acceptance. You can pay by credit card, wire transfer, or institutional purchase order. Most universities prefer purchase orders routed through the library or grants office.
Why Science Advances exists
AAAS launched Science Advances in 2015 to solve two problems at once.
First, the flagship Science has extremely limited space. It publishes roughly 800 research articles per year and rejects over 93% of submissions. Science Advances provides a home for strong multidisciplinary research that doesn't fit Science's narrow format or scope requirements.
Second, Science has no open access option. As funder mandates increasingly require immediate OA, AAAS needed a journal that could satisfy those requirements. Science Advances fills that gap. It's the only AAAS research journal where authors can comply with Plan S, Wellcome Trust, and other immediate-OA mandates without workarounds.
The journal has grown quickly. It now publishes over 2,000 articles per year across all scientific disciplines, with an impact factor of 12.5 (2024). That puts it in strong company, competitive with journals like Nature Communications and PNAS.
Discounts and waivers: who pays less
AAAS offers several paths to reduce or eliminate the APC:
Automatic full waivers
Corresponding authors based in Research4Life/Hinari Group A countries (low-income nations) and Group B countries (lower-middle-income nations) receive automatic full waivers. You don't need to apply. The system detects your institutional affiliation during the payment process and applies the waiver.
This covers researchers in approximately 120 countries. If you're at an institution in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, or other qualifying regions, you pay nothing.
AAAS membership discount
Active AAAS members get 4% off the APC, saving $218. AAAS membership costs $175/year for postdocs and $282 for regular members. If you publish one article per year in Science Advances, the membership essentially pays for itself through the discount.
The discount stacks with some institutional agreements, so you could potentially get both 10% institutional and 4% member discounts. Check with your library to confirm whether stacking applies to your institution's specific deal.
Institutional agreements
AAAS has negotiated bulk pricing with several institutions and consortia:
Institution / Consortium | Discount | Period | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
University of California system | 10% | Through 2026 | Applies to all 10 UC campuses |
Finnish FinELib consortium | 15% | Through Dec 2026 | Covers all Finnish universities |
Various US universities | 5-10% | Varies | Check your library's agreements page |
AAAS developing country partners | 100% waiver | Ongoing | Hinari A & B countries |
The US doesn't have a national-level agreement with AAAS. Coverage depends on whether your specific institution has negotiated a deal. This is different from the Springer Nature model, where massive consortia like Jisc (UK) or DEAL (Germany) cover entire national systems.
Financial hardship waivers
If you don't qualify for any of the above and genuinely can't afford the APC, AAAS offers a hardship waiver request process. Contact the Science Advances business office after acceptance. Approval is discretionary, but AAAS is generally receptive to requests from early-career researchers at institutions without grant funding or OA funds.
AAAS states that waiver requests are handled by the business team and are never visible to editors or reviewers. Your paper's fate doesn't change based on your ability to pay.
Licensing: CC BY-NC vs CC BY
Science Advances uses CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) as the default license. This means anyone can read, share, and adapt your work for non-commercial purposes, but commercial reuse requires permission.
However, CC BY (no NonCommercial restriction) is available as an alternative. This matters for two reasons:
- Plan S compliance: cOAlition S funders require CC BY. If you're funded by Wellcome Trust, ERC, UKRI, or another Plan S member, you must select CC BY during the production process.
- Maximum reuse: CC BY allows commercial entities (pharma companies, textbook publishers) to reuse your work without asking. Some authors prefer this for maximum dissemination.
Select your license carefully during production. Changing from CC BY-NC to CC BY after publication is technically possible but slow, requires publisher approval, and isn't guaranteed.
Funder mandate compliance
Science Advances satisfies all major public access mandates when the correct license is selected:
Funder/Policy | Compliant? | License Required |
|---|---|---|
Plan S (cOAlition S) | Yes | CC BY |
NIH Public Access Policy | Yes | CC BY-NC or CC BY |
UKRI | Yes | CC BY |
ERC (European Research Council) | Yes | CC BY |
Wellcome Trust | Yes | CC BY |
NSF Public Access (2026) | Yes | CC BY-NC or CC BY |
HHMI | Yes | CC BY |
This is the single biggest advantage Science Advances holds over the flagship Science. While Science can't satisfy Plan S at all (no immediate OA option), Science Advances checks every box. For European researchers with cOAlition S funding, Science Advances is often the only AAAS option that works.
How Science Advances compares on cost
Journal | APC (USD) | Model | IF (2024) | License Default |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Science Advances | $5,450 | Gold OA | 12.5 | CC BY-NC |
Nature Communications | $7,350 | Gold OA | 15.7 | CC BY |
PNAS (immediate OA) | $4,975-$5,475 | Hybrid | 9.1 | CC BY-NC |
eLife | $0 | Gold OA | 6.4 | CC BY |
PLOS Biology | ~$3,700 | Gold OA | 8.2 | CC BY |
Science Advances sits in the middle tier for multidisciplinary gold OA journals. It's $1,900 cheaper than Nature Communications with a somewhat lower impact factor (12.5 vs 15.7). Whether that gap is worth $1,900 depends on your field and how your tenure committee weighs these journals.
eLife's $0 APC looks attractive, but eLife restructured its editorial model and now publishes "reviewed preprints" rather than traditional articles. The two journals aren't directly comparable anymore. PLOS Biology is cheaper but has a narrower scope focused on biological sciences.
PNAS at $4,975-$5,475 (with site license) is the closest competitor on price. PNAS has a broader scope and higher volume, but Science Advances carries the AAAS brand, which has weight in physical sciences, engineering, and interdisciplinary research.
Hidden costs and fees to watch
The $5,450 APC is the only charge. Science Advances doesn't impose page fees, color figure surcharges, or supplementary data hosting fees. But there are indirect costs to consider:
- License mistakes: Selecting CC BY-NC when your funder requires CC BY is the most common and most painful error. You won't notice until your funder's compliance check flags it. Fix it before publication, not after.
- Overlength manuscripts: Science Advances doesn't impose strict page limits for most article types, but Research Articles over 15,000 words may be asked to trim during review. This isn't a fee, but it's a time cost.
- Data availability: The journal requires that underlying data be deposited in public repositories. Repository costs are typically $0 for standard datasets, but very large datasets (genomics, imaging) may incur storage fees at repositories like Dryad or Figshare.
- Preprint costs: $0. Science Advances allows and encourages preprint posting on bioRxiv, arXiv, or other servers at any stage.
Submission and review process
Understanding the timeline helps you budget and plan:
Science Advances uses a single-blind review process (reviewers know your identity, you don't know theirs). The median time from submission to first decision is around 30 days. If your paper goes to review (about 25% of submissions do), the full timeline from submission to publication is typically 5-7 months.
The journal accepts Research Articles, Research Resources, Reviews, and Technical Notes. Research Articles are the most common and carry the standard $5,450 APC regardless of length.
One useful feature: if your paper is rejected by Science (the flagship), you can transfer it to Science Advances with your reviewer reports. The Science Advances editors may still send it for additional review, but the transfer preserves previous feedback and can speed up the process.
The practical decision
Science Advances is a strong choice when three conditions align: your work is multidisciplinary, your funder requires immediate OA, and you have $5,450 in your budget (or your institution covers it).
If you're comparing Science Advances against Nature Communications, the decision comes down to price vs. prestige. Nature Communications has a higher IF and broader recognition, but costs $1,900 more. In fields where the AAAS brand carries weight (physics, earth sciences, engineering), Science Advances may actually be the better-known journal.
If OA isn't required and you're targeting the AAAS ecosystem, consider submitting to the flagship Science first. It's free to publish there. If rejected, the transfer pathway to Science Advances is smooth.
Before submitting to any AAAS journal, the manuscript needs to demonstrate broad significance beyond a single field. That's the editorial bar. If you want to test whether your paper hits that threshold, run a free readiness scan to spot weaknesses before the editors do.
Reference library
Use the core publishing datasets alongside this guide
This article answers one part of the publishing decision. The reference library covers the recurring questions that usually come next: how selective journals are, how long review takes, and what the submission requirements look like across journals.
Dataset / reference guide
Peer Review Timelines by Journal
Reference-grade journal timeline data that authors, labs, and writing centers can cite when discussing realistic review timing.
Dataset / benchmark
Biomedical Journal Acceptance Rates
A field-organized acceptance-rate guide that works as a neutral benchmark when authors are deciding how selective to target.
Reference table
Journal Submission Specs
A high-utility submission table covering word limits, figure caps, reference limits, and formatting expectations.
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