Celebrating Open Access Week — “The Cost of Knowledge”

Every October, the research community marks International Open Access Week, which is celebrated globally by universities, libraries, funders, publishers, and individual researchers, each shaping their own events and emphasis. It has become one of academia’s key moments for sharing what's new in open access, reflecting on emerging trends, and connecting the community across institutions and borders.

This year's theme, 'The Cost of Knowledge,' picks up where 2025's 'Who Owns Our Knowledge?' left off: if researchers and their communities are the rightful owners of what they discover, what price is worth paying to make it available to everyone, and who is bearing the cost?

Both themes connect naturally. Under open access, publishers no longer own the knowledge they publish—authors and their institutions do—but they remain responsible for organizing peer review among the wider scientific community and maintaining the outlets that give new research its visibility. Far from shrinking, that role has only grown. As global research output continues to expand, so too have the infrastructure and services needed to validate, publish, preserve, and disseminate it.

As a fully open access publisher, MDPI has spent more than 30 years working through exactly that: removing the cost of access for readers, while covering the publishing cost itself through APCs instead. That gives us a direct stake in answering the questions: what does it cost to publish openly, and what does that cost actually cover? More on that below.

The cost of producing knowledge

Long before an article is submitted for publication, as a way of communicating it to the scientific community, knowledge has already cost something. A researcher may spend months, sometimes years, designing experiments, securing funding, and running trials—refining the work further through peer feedback, conference discussion, and group review, long before it reaches a journal's editorial office. Salaries, laboratory space, and equipment are paid for throughout; these costs exist no matter where or how the resulting paper is eventually published.

This matters because publishing costs are one of the more visible layers in that chain, not the whole of it. Open access doesn't lower the underlying cost of doing research, it changes who pays for the final step of making it available to all. MDPI is transparent about what our APCs cover, so that step can be planned for without coming at the expense of the research itself.

The value of research grows when it is scrutinized, shared and made available for others to build on; dissemination isn't an optional step after the fact, it is part of the research process itself.

The cost of Open Access publishing

Under an article processing charge (APC) model, that final step—making an article freely, immediately, and permanently available to anyone, anywhere—is paid for by authors, their funders, or their institutions, rather than by readers or libraries when buying access. It is a genuinely different economic model from subscription publishing, and it comes with its own costs, which we believe are worth explaining specifically rather than leaving as a black box.

An APC at MDPI funds work across several distinct areas:

Editorial quality. Recruiting and regularly training editorial staff, triaging new submissions, coordinating peer review and day-to-day liaison with academic editors so that every submission—across more than 500 journals—is held to the same rigorous editorial standard.
Widening access. Discounts through MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program, plus vouchers and invitation-based waivers for reviewers and contributors, extending who can publish openly, not just who can read.
Research integrity. Plagiarism, image, and data screening tools and dedicated integrity staff who also support post-publication correction processes, so that the scholarly record can be corrected, clarified, or retracted when needed.
Production, indexing, and preservation. Copy-editing, typesetting, and proofreading that turn an accepted manuscript into a polished article, indexing efforts that keep articles discoverable in the databases researchers search, and permanent archiving through the Swiss National Library and CLOCKSS.
A global editor community. Supporting and growing a volunteer community of Editors-in-Chief and Editorial Board Members (EBMs), including stipends or travel support for Editors-in-Chief and an annual APC waiver for EBMs, in recognition of the time and expertise they contribute to the peer review process.
Community and cooperation. Sponsoring conferences, scholarly society events, and researcher awards—including open access events we host in our office countries—that extend the visibility of open research.
Platforms researchers rely on. Ongoing development and maintenance of the submission and peer review systems authors, reviewers, and editors use every day, alongside open science tools such as Preprints.org and Scilit.

This list is not comprehensive, but it highlights the offerings of a global and fully OA publisher like MDPI and the work it takes to deliver each of these to a high standard. The community’s involvement has been key to the success of MDPI’s journals. Being open about where that investment goes is how we keep the partnership between MDPI and its research community transparent, especially as the cost of knowledge keeps rising.

For more information on article processing charges, including what it covers and a full list of journal-specific APCs, please click here.

Marking Open Access Week 2026

Throughout the year, we are publishing resources and perspectives on various aspects of open access on the MDPI Blog.

Resources on Open Access:

As always, we welcome the conversation this week starts. Knowledge has never been free to produce—the question worth returning to regularly is how to make sure the cost of sharing it never becomes a barrier to who gets to participate in and benefit from the knowledge.

Join the Conversation

MDPI Webinar: Disinformation and Open Science: A New Relationship

Generative AI has made creating and spreading scientific disinformation easier than ever—yet Open Science principles such as transparency, open data, and open peer review offer ways to verify and protect research. But are they enough? Our expert speakers will debate the opportunities and threats AI brings, whether new vulnerabilities are emerging, and how open practices can evolve to maintain trust and rigor in scientific publishing.

Preprints.org Webinar: Toward a Faster and Open Future of Sharing: Lowering the Cost of Knowledge

What does it cost when knowledge takes too long to reach those who need it? To mark Preprints.org's 10th anniversary, we're bringing together voices from across the research ecosystem to explore how preprints and open science can help reduce that cost—without compromising responsible, trustworthy research sharing. Join the conversation, share your perspective, and leave with fresh ideas to take forward.