How can I pay my open access fee?

When you publish open access you're required to pay an open access fee. The open access fee is also known as the Article Publishing Charge (APC). In most cases, the APC is covered either by your institution or funder, or needs to be deducted from your grant. Use the Rights and Access form to indicate if you want to pay the open access fee via credit card online or receive an invoice.

Before you pay the open access fee, please:

• Check whether your journal supports open access and what the APC is by consulting the open access section from your journal's Guide for Authors. To access your Guide for Authors, go to the journal homepage. To go to your journal's homepage, visit ScienceDirect and search for your journal.
• Read your institution's and/or funding body's open access policy and guidance about APCs.
• Discuss the open access options of your article with your co-authors.
• Check whether you received the Rights and Access form. The corresponding author receives the link to the Rights and Access form via email once the article has been accepted and entered into our production system.   
• Check with your institution:

  • Their complete billing address where we will send the invoice.
  • If the institution is VAT registered or tax exempt, obtain their tax registration number or tax exemption certificate, and complete the billing details section in the Rights and Access form.
  • Whether they can raise a Purchase Order with or without an invoice.

How

Follow these steps to pay your open access fee:

1. Open the email you received from Elsevier and click the link to the Rights and Access form.
2. Complete the Rights and Access form, indicating if you want to receive an invoice or pay online with a credit card.

   • If you select the invoice option:

     • You will receive a confirmation email.
     • You will receive the invoice email within 48 hours. Once you receive the invoice, use the payment methods provided on the invoice to send your payment.

   • If you select the credit card option:

     • You can pay the fee immediately.
     • You will receive a confirmation and receipt by email.

     Please do not send your credit card details via email . To ensure data protection of credit card information, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards state that we cannot process credit card information received by email.

For more information, please read our Guide to Publishing Open Access.

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