What it costs to publish
Nothing. SustainaTerra does not ask authors for any payment at any stage. There is no submission fee, no article processing charge (APC) after acceptance, and no extra charges for colour figures, page length, supplementary files or the number of authors.
The journal covers the costs of peer review, editing, typesetting, online hosting and long-term access itself, so that cost is never a reason for researchers — including those without grant funding — not to share their work.
If our fee policy ever changes, the change will be announced on this page before it takes effect. The fees that apply to a manuscript are those shown here on the day it is submitted.
What open access means here
Open access means there is no paywall and no subscription: anyone with an internet connection can read, download, print and share SustainaTerra articles, from a farmer's cooperative to a ministry, a classroom or a lab. For a journal working on sustainability, that matters — the people who can use the findings are often the ones least able to pay for access.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)
Articles are published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. In short, anyone may:
- share the article — copy and redistribute it in any medium or format;
- adapt it — translate it, reuse figures, build on it, including for commercial purposes;
provided they credit the authors and the original publication (with a link to the article and its DOI) and indicate any changes made.
What authors keep
- Copyright stays with you. You do not transfer copyright to the journal; you grant the CC BY licence.
- You can post the published article on your website, your institution's repository, ResearchGate, ORCID or any other platform, at any time.
- You can reuse your figures, tables and text in later work, theses, teaching material and talks, citing the original article.
- Your article keeps a permanent link and DOI, so citations to it stay valid.
Funder and institutional requirements
Many funders and institutions require their research to be openly available under a CC BY licence. Publishing in SustainaTerra meets that requirement with no budget needed: there is nothing to request from your grant or your library for publication costs.
Common questions
Will I be asked to pay at any point?
No. Neither at submission, nor at acceptance, nor at publication. If you ever receive a payment request claiming to come from SustainaTerra, do not pay it and forward it to editorial@sustainaterra.org.
Does free publishing mean a lighter review?
No. Every manuscript goes through the same editorial check and double-blind peer review, described in the guide for authors. Fees have no part in editorial decisions.
Are special issue articles free too?
Yes. Articles in special issues follow exactly the same policy.
Can others reuse my figures commercially?
Yes, under CC BY anyone may reuse them, including commercially, as long as they credit you and the article. If your figures include material owned by someone else, you need their permission for reuse under CC BY before publication.
Ready to publish? Read how to submit, or go straight to the submission form.