No.

Some publishers that charge article processing charges (APCs) offer discounts on those APCs based on the institutional subscriptions purchased by the author's library. The University Libraries have also made agreements (sometimes called "read and publish agreements") with some publishers to cover APCs that would otherwise be charged to Penn State corresponding authors. A list of such discounts and agreements available to Penn State authors is available on the Article Processing Charges page of our Open Access guide. Many publishers that charge APCs also provide APC waivers for some authors, for example authors based in developing countries.

If you are looking to publish in an open access journal that does not charge an APC, you may want to browse journals in your field that are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. It allows you to filter your search results based on whether an APC is required.

If you are publishing in a subscription (or "paywalled") journal but have been offered the opportunity to make your individual article open access in exchange for payment of a fee, you may want to consider Green OA, sometimes called self-archiving, instead. You can use the Jisc Open Policy Finder to check your ability to deposit the pre-print, accepted manuscript (post-print), or final version of your article in an open repository such as ScholarSphere without paying a fee. For additional information about hybrid models, you may wish to read Lisa Matthias's blog post, The Worst of Both Worlds, Hybrid Open Access.

If you have further questions, you can contact or book an appointment with someone from the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright.