MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) Explained

Daniella Maritan-Thomson28 May 2025 Open Science

MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) Explained

MDPI Open Access journals support the publication of a wide range of research, allowing the dissemination of important and groundbreaking topics.

As the largest Open Access publisher in the world, MDPI continues to support scholars and researchers in their Open Access journey. Additionally, we also spread the knowledge and the many benefits of Open Access publishing and dispel common misconceptions.

MDPI also strives to make the transition to Open Access publishing as seamless as possible by providing support and guidance for libraries, institutions and authors.

Here we explore the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), which provides flexible agreements and a range of benefits for researchers and institutions.

What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) is a publishing model for scholarly research that makes information immediately available to readers at no cost. The research is often free to reuse for scholarly purposes.

In short, some of the goals of OA are:

Availability and reusability of scientific research for the public;
Accessibility and transparency of scientific communication;
Facilitating scientific collaboration;
Transparency for the methodology, observation, and collection of data.

OA is helping to ensure that scientific research can reach its potential by eliminating the barriers to accessing and producing research.

Why Open Access is important

Open Access is important as it makes information and research freely available. This increases the visibility and potential impact of the research, which could result in important scientific breakthroughs and inspire collaborations. In addition, research published using an Open Access model is permanently available online, inspiring future researchers and benefiting institutions and the research community. It has the power to help address and contribute solutions to current issues. Furthermore, it can also help to fight against the spread of misinformation and fake news, which has infiltrated the media. It allows factual data and stats to be freely available for research and can be used to disprove these sources.

Open Access is fundamental to achieving MDPI’s mission to foster open, high-quality, scientific exchange. Moreover, we aim to ensure transparency and efficiency as much as possible throughout the process. One example of how we accomplish this is by offering the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) to institutions and consortia, flexible agreement models which offer a variety of payment workflows as well as a wide range of benefits and discounts.

Institutional Open Access Program

MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program provides transparency to the MDPI submission process, access to a unique institutional dashboard environment, and a discount on Article Processing Charges (APC) for affiliated researchers. With flexible agreements that offer a variety of payment workflows, MDPI can cater to individual institutional needs to help simplify administrative processes.

We support institutions to abide by Plan S, a publishing initiative launched by cOAlition S to ensure full and immediate open access to scholarly publications resulting from research funded by its member organisations. Additionally, we also support institutions to abide by national mandates whilst making it easy for authors to publish in fully compliant (CC-BY) Open Access journals.

The IOAP currently has 917 participating institutions worldwide, all benefiting from tailored support and discounted APCs. Please see here for our full list of partners.

Agreement models

The programme has two main types of agreement models: the discount agreement model and the flat fee agreement model, which provide flexibility to institutions and authors on payment methods.

Discounted agreement model

The discounted agreement model is available to all institutions that sign up for IOAP for free. The authors affiliated with participating universities receive an IOAP discount on the APC for any paper published in an MDPI journal at no charge to the institution. However, the discounted APCs must be paid by the institution, author or research group for each paper published.

Flat Fee agreement model

The flat-fee agreement model is available for institutions with a demonstrated history of substantial and ongoing publication. This model differs from the discounted agreement model as it allows eligible institutions to pay an annual fee, enabling their corresponding authors to publish a fixed or unlimited number of papers across the entire MDPI portfolio. This model is appealing to universities that have a high publication rate and want to reduce their administrative burden.

Flexible workflows

The IOAP aims to make Open Access publishing experience for institutions and authors as simple and beneficial as possible. This includes providing two different payment types for institutions to choose from.

Non-central workflow

This is the default setting for IOAP membership accounts. The institutions will not be issued any invoices. The authors will benefit from the IOAP discount and will be invoiced directly.

Central workflow

Institutions that are funding publication fees for chosen articles can opt for central invoicing by enabling the central payment option in the dashboard or by notifying the IOAP team. The invoices will be sent to the provided central billing address once the approved manuscript has been accepted for publication in an MDPI journal. The invoicing process can be adjusted to meet the needs of each member institution to assist with reducing the administrative burden. In addition, to further supporting institutions in achieving their open access targets, there are additional discounts available for institutions that choose central workflow payments.

There are three standard central invoicing options available:

Direct: The institution receives one individual invoice for each article marked as ‘central’ in their dashboard.
Collective: The institution receives a collective invoice monthly/quarterly that includes the APCs of all the central payment articles that were accepted for publication during that period.
Prepayment: Under this option, institutions can deposit a set amount of funds of their choosing into an IOAP prepayment account. For each accepted article that is confirmed as a central payment, its APC is automatically deducted from the deposited amount. Institutions can top up additional funds at any time and will be notified by MDPI whenever the amount of funds available is too low to cover additional articles.

Benefits of IOAP

Joining the IOAP program provides authors, institutions and libraries with support and allows for greater visibility of research and projects within universities. Furthermore, joining the program also has a wide range of additional benefits.

Operational efficiency: SuSy dashboard

The institutional dashboard is an add-on to the MDPI submission system ‘Susy’, which allows real-time visibility over articles that have been submitted by their researchers to MDPI journals. Moreover, it also provides detailed article metadata, up-to-date APC information, downloadable reports, and information about editorial engagement.

Discounts

The IOAP program allows researchers and universities to receive discounts on APCs across all MDPI journals, which can be combined with other available discounts such as reviewer vouchers.

How APC discounts work

All institutions that sign up for the IOAP program for free give authors and researchers access to discounts on APCs across the entire MDPI journal portfolio. The standard discount is 10%, but it may be higher for our consortium members. All affiliated authors are eligible for the discount; they do not need to be the corresponding author on the manuscript.

The discount is added by the authors at the end of the submission process. The editorial teams then check affiliations during the precheck step to ensure that no eligible authors miss out on the discount.

MDPI books

MDPI also supports Open Access book publishing, making academic books freely available online without traditional barriers to access, including purchase costs or restrictive licensing agreements. Researchers who are part of IOAP benefit from a 10% discount on Book Processing Charges (BPC) for MDPI books as well as a 15% discount on our Author Services. If you would like to read more about MDPI books, please see here.

JAMS

MDPI supports small and independent publishers in their open access journey by providing the Journal & Article Management System (JAMS). The system is designed to empower small and independent publishers worldwide. Backed by MDPI’s decades of expertise in Open Access publishing, JAMS offers a comprehensive solution that simplifies journal management and helps publishers thrive. Joining the IOAP program also provides a 10% discount on JAMS services.

Institutional repository

The IOAP allows access to an institutional repository, where papers from affiliated authors are stored. Additionally, the author’s papers are automatically deposited into the institutional repository using the SWORD 1.3 protocol. This includes a metadata package and a PDF of the manuscript.

Direct point of contact

Navigating the Open Access publishing industry can feel complex and confusing. The IOAP provides a direct point of contact at MDPI for questions and support.

Frequently asked questions

During the enquiry and joining process, the IOAP team has collected a series of frequently asked questions (FAQs) to explain the program in more detail.

How much does it cost to join the IOAP?

There is no membership fee; the IOAP is free to join.

Can the IOAP be combined with other MDPI discounts?

The discount can be combined with most vouchers provided by MDPI, e.g., reviewer and editorial vouchers. Only one IOAP discount can be used per manuscript, and it cannot be combined with a society discount.

Do you do transformative agreements/read and publish agreements?

By our nature as an Open Access publisher, we are not able to do these agreements, as all our content is already free to read. However, over the last 18 months we have been designing new agreement models that aim to provide similar levels of ease and cost savings through our Flat Fee and central models. We aim to level the playing field so that authors can choose their publication platform without being constrained by APC considerations.

Why does the IOAP provide a higher central discount?

The aim with our central models (including the flat fee) is to make it easier for institutions to support their researchers to publish in Open Access and to help remove the APC barrier for authors. We want to support and give back to the research community by providing discounts and cost savings.

How are the flat fees calculated?

Generally, we take a three-year average of paid publications and multiply this by a fixed price per paper. We endeavour to reflect the current publishing trend of the institution. Please contact the IOAP team for a quote here.