It is critically important to us that all authors are able to publish quality results in our journals, regardless of their funding situation. To this end, we have increased our financial waiver budget under our new open access model launching 1 January 2022.
Partial and full waivers of article publication charges may be requested at time of submission. Waivers can be requested for articles submitted to AJ, ApJ, ApJ Supplements, and ApJ Letters, but note that we are requiring that authors pay the $450 handling fee for all ApJ Letters articles to cover the extra costs related to the speed of publication. Waiver request forms will be available both in the submission system and on this page when the new waiver system goes into effect in 2022.
Waiver requests from communities/authors with no funding sources will be given priority. These include astronomers in countries with extremely limited support for research, retired researchers, and astronomers whose institutions provide little or no support for research. Other requests for waivers will be accommodated to the extent that our budget allows. In general, we expect all authors who are in a position to contribute to publication costs to do so; a request for a waiver does not guarantee that one will be granted.
To ensure that the waiver system is used effectively, we are modifying our peer review system to allow us to gather critical demographic information (like PhD year, availability of grant funding, etc.) from everyone requesting an article publication charge waiver, and we will retain data on all waiver requests and awards within the peer review system. While the waivers are granted by the Editor in Chief, the AAS Publications Committee will review the criteria and efficacy of the program in order to improve the process in response to community input and productivity. On the financial side, the Editor in Chief will coordinate with the Chief Finance and Operations Officer (CFOO) to ensure we remain within budget parameters. The CFOO will provide quarterly reports to the Board of Trustees anonymously detailing the budget status and waiver distribution of the past quarter. We plan to adjust our waiver policy, criteria, and funding level over time based on our experience administering the program.
