For authors
Fees and waivers
Submission fees, hardship-country waivers, and open-access publication terms.
Last updated: September 17, 2026
This policy applies to submissions received on or after that date.
Submission fees
The submission fee is US$125, or US$25 for a verified educational address. The applicable fee is charged when the paper is sent. An educational address is one at a university or other academic institution, confirmed with the six-digit code we email you. If your institution is not recognised, write to info@acceleratedscience.org and we will add it. Waivers are available through the Fees and Waivers section and must be requested before payment; once the fee is paid a waiver cannot be applied, because fees are non-refundable.
- Standard submission: US$125
- Verified educational address: US$25
Fee categories
An educational submission is one for which the corresponding author submits using a valid, verified email address at an educational institution. Addresses at recognised academic domains, such as those ending in .edu or .ac, and institutional addresses at universities and colleges, are read as educational.
A non-educational submission is any submission that does not meet that definition, including a submission made using a commercial, governmental, non-profit, or personal email address.
The category is resolved from the corresponding author's verified address at the time of submission, and the applicable fee is shown before payment. Where an institutional address is not recognised, write to info@acceleratedscience.org before paying.
The fee supports submission processing, automated assessment, human editorial screening, and platform operations. It applies on the same terms to human-authored, AI-assisted, and AI-generated manuscripts, provided that each submission meets our requirements for disclosure, authorship, research integrity, and responsible use of AI.
The fee is charged once per manuscript submission. An editor-invited revision does not require a further fee. A manuscript submitted again after a decline is a new submission and is subject to the then-current fee, unless the corresponding author qualifies for a hardship-country waiver.
Authors may not change the applicable fee category after payment by replacing or adding a corresponding author.
Applicable taxes, if any, and available payment options are shown before payment is completed. Any change to these fees will be announced on this page before it takes effect and will not apply retroactively to a completed submission.
No cash refunds
Fees are non-refundable.
The fee supports services initiated when the manuscript is submitted, including administrative processing, automated assessment, and human editorial screening. It is not a publication charge and does not affect the editorial outcome.
No cash refund is available if a manuscript is accepted, declined, returned for revision, withdrawn, returned before external review, found ineligible, or otherwise does not proceed to publication.
Authors are responsible for charges imposed independently by their bank, card issuer, currency-conversion provider, or payment service.
Waivers for hardship countries
A full submission-fee waiver is available only to a corresponding author affiliated with an eligible educational institution located in a hardship country listed below.
For this policy, an eligible educational institution is a recognized university, college, school, or non-profit research institution located in the listed country. The educational fee category is determined by the verified institutional email address on the account, while hardship-country waiver eligibility is determined by the location and status of the author’s educational institution.
Eligibility is determined by the location of the corresponding author’s institution, not by nationality, citizenship, residence, the location of co-authors, or the subject of the manuscript.
The corresponding author must request the waiver before payment. A waiver cannot be applied to a fee that has already been paid, and no refund is issued in its place. The request should be sent from an official institutional email address where available. If such an address is unavailable, the author may provide a current institutional webpage or a brief confirmation from the institution. This information is used only to verify waiver eligibility.
Eligible hardship countries
The following countries are eligible because the World Bank currently classifies them as low-income economies:
Afghanistan; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Central African Republic; Chad; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Eritrea; Ethiopia; The Gambia; Guinea-Bissau; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Liberia; Madagascar; Malawi; Mali; Mozambique; Niger; Rwanda; Sierra Leone; Somalia; South Sudan; Sudan; Syrian Arab Republic; Uganda; Yemen.
This list follows the World Bank’s current low-income economy classification and is reviewed annually. If the World Bank changes a country’s classification, the revised eligibility list will be posted on this page before the change takes effect. Eligibility is determined by the list in force on the date the manuscript is submitted.
To request a waiver, contact info@acceleratedscience.org with the subject line “Hardship-country waiver request.” Requests are normally answered within two business days.
Waiver requests are handled solely by administrative staff with no role in manuscript assessment or editorial decisions. Reviewers, editors, editorial-board members, and all decision-makers cannot see whether a fee was paid, waived, or disputed.
A waiver request or waiver decision has no effect on eligibility, assessment standards, review speed, editorial treatment, or publication decisions.
Publication and access
There is no publication fee and no article processing charge (APC).
If accepted, a manuscript is published without further charge to its authors and is freely available to all readers immediately on publication. Published content is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), unless an explicitly stated exception applies.
Authors retain copyright. Under CC BY 4.0, others may share and adapt published content provided that appropriate attribution is given and the licence terms are followed.
Separation of payment from assessment
Editorial decisions are independent of payment.
Payment, waiver, and billing records are kept separately from the manuscript-review system. They are not accessible to reviewers, editors, editorial-board members, or anyone making or advising on an editorial decision.
Every manuscript is assessed solely under Accelerated Science’s published standards of originality, rigor, transparency, research integrity, and relevance. Automated assessment may support the process, but human editors retain responsibility for editorial screening and final publication decisions.
Institutional agreements
No institutional agreements are currently in place.
Libraries, universities, research funders, and consortia that wish to discuss an institutional arrangement may contact info@acceleratedscience.org. Any agreement will be listed publicly on this page, including its scope, eligibility rules, effective dates, and any effect on author fees.
Institutional arrangements, if established, will not affect editorial standards, assessment procedures, reviewer access to payment information, or the independence of publication decisions.