Policy on APC Waivers for Financial Hardship

Updated on December 17, 2025

 As from January 1, 2026 all ACM Publications will be published on a fully Open Access basis and will require participation in ACM Open, the payment of an APC, or a geographic or financial hardship waiver to publish with ACM.

Inclusion and serving the public interest are important parts of  ACM's mission and values, and accordingly it is important that no-one be precluded from publishing with ACM for reasons of financial hardship. ACM authors not covered by ACM Open or a geographic waiver may apply for a financial hardship waiver from ACM. Geographic waivers will be processed automatically, so authors need take no additional steps if they are eligible for a geographic waiver or discount.

ACM has developed a system to facilitate the submission and decision making for financial hardship APC waivers. This system provides the corresponding author with the following information and the option to submit a financial hardship waiver request to ACM:

• Article Title
• Author Names and Institutional Affiliations for all listed co-authors, including all authors' departmental affiliations
• Publication Title (i.e.- Journal Title, Conference Title, Magazine Title, etc.)
• The names of Research Funders funding the research

Additionally, the system will provide the corresponding author with a text box to briefly describe the reason for the financial hardship request. Please note that simply stating an inability to pay an APC as a result of being a graduate student or independent consultant without an affiliated institution is not itself a demonstration of financial hardship and is unlikely to be approved. Once submitted through ACM's system, financial hardship waiver requests will be sent to the appropriate decision maker, and the corresponding author will be notified of the decision via email. 

Note that waiver requests can only be submitted via the system for accepted articles. ACM will not grant waivers for any papers outside the system. For authors of articles not yet submitted or accepted to an ACM Publication who have questions about the possibility of their submissions receiving a waiver in the future should their submission be accepted, please send questions to [email protected]. 

Financial hardship waivers for accepted ACM Conference submissions are supported by the sponsoring Special Interest Group (SIG) and will be handled by the individual ACM Conference Leadership through the submission acceptance and eRights process (i.e. - the system referenced above). 

Authors must demonstrate an inability to pay and not rely solely on a statement that they are unable to pay. APCs are an ordinary cost of doing research and ACM expects that researchers not at ACM Open institutions will cover them out of the funds supporting the research. Authors should seek university resources before applying for a waiver from ACM; it is expected that large research universities in developed countries are able to provide such support. Unique circumstances; such as being directly impacted by war, political instability, natural disasters, or other extraordinary events are appropriate reasons to request a waiver.  Only applications that demonstrate a genuine financial hardship will be considered. 

Please note the following:

1. Papers with multiple co-authors from computer science or engineering departments in developed countries where there is a reasonable expectation that the authors' institutions should be ACM Open participants, typically Tier 1-5 institutions based on the ACM Open tiering structure, are unlikely to receive financial hardship waivers, as the sustainability of ACM’s Open Access publishing model depends on the financial support of research institutions and their affiliated authors. Tier 1-5 institutions publish 20 or more APC-eligible papers annually with ACM and absent exceptional circumstances it would not be possible to grant financial hardship waivers for authors affiliated from these institutions. If you request a financial hardship waiver, we will notify you if your institutional affiliation would disqualify you from receiving a financial hardship waiver.
2. Papers with co-authors affiliated with for-profit companies are not eligible to receive financial hardship waivers, as the expectation is that the co-author's employer should be funding the research outputs on behalf of their employees.