You are here

Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment

Open Access                                                                                                                                    

Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment is an integrated online platform that provides a single portal for authors, consortia, libraries and funders to manage open access publishing across more than 1000 journals published by Sage including titles published on behalf of, or in association with, over 400 societies. Launched in early 2020, Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment now supports both Sage Choice, our hybrid OA publishing option for 900+ journals, as well as Sage’s 180+ pure Gold Open Access journals.   

Read our Frequently Asked Questions below to learn more about Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment. 

Learn more about Sage’s Open Access program as well as our various Open Access Agreements

Why is Sage launching Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment?  

Sage’s Open Access publishing program has grown rapidly over the last five years and as the market accelerates towards a more open future, we want to centralize and automate our Open Access processes with a system flexible enough to fully meet the wide variety of needs of all stakeholders. The design and launch of this portal allows Sage to:  

  1. Bring together all of our Open Access (OA) processes into a single system provided by one customer facing portal. 
  2. Make its OA processes as easy and streamlined as possible for authors and bill payers of Article Processing Charges (APCs). 
  3. Enable automated compliance with all funder or national open access mandates and meet the terms and arrangements for our Open Access Agreements. 
  4. Give its key stakeholders (authors, consortia, libraries and funders) the means to view and track articles through approval, license selection and (where applicable) payment transaction processes. 
  5. Provide detailed reporting through various administrative dashboard views and downloadable report functions. 
  6. Develop our own fully flexible platform solution to meet the needs of Sage’s journals, authors and library customers into the foreseeable future. 

What will Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment do? 

Sage Journals: Licensing & Payment is a sophisticated online platform that uses customer-specific business rules to bring a wide range of open access workflows into a single unique, bespoke, and user-friendly portal. 

For Authors it will: 

  • Automatically identify and contact all authors who are eligible for an Open Access Agreement with Sage soon after their article enters Production. 
  • Provide the appropriate OA Creative Commons license which they, or any co-author, can select and digitally sign, quickly and easily.
  • Provide a fully integrated online payment system to manage the APC transaction process, including automatically applying any applicable discounts, waivers or taxes. Authors will: 
    • always be given any waiver or the highest discount they are eligible for, 
    • automatically be told if no payment is necessary or another party has already met any payment due,
    • be able to assign a bill payer given by the system (for example, a named institution or funder), 
    • have the choice to nominate an alternative bill payer or choose themselves as the bill payer.
  • Ensure that they are meeting all known points of compliance including any applicable taxes due on their APC. 
  • Send automated reminders and updates on any activities relating to their article(s) in the portal. 
  • Create a personal login account within the portal from which to view and track the open access status of any article(s) on which they are an author or co-author. 

For Consortia with an Open Access Agreement with Sage, it will: 

  • Set up the specific terms of their agreement to provide a single uniform workflow for their members to manage all of the hybrid and gold open access publishing provided for in their agreement with Sage. 
  • Automatically identify all eligible authors and eligible journals to which to apply the terms of their agreement; maximizing the uptake of their Open Access Agreement. 
  • Communicate requirements for Open Access publishing with their authors. 
  • Enable Sage to report with greater accuracy on the open access published output of their member institutions and their consortium organization. 

For Libraries it will: 

  • Automate the terms of any Open Access Agreement they have either directly with Sage or are eligible for through a consortium or other agreement with Sage. 
  • Enable them to be set up in the system as a Centralized Bill Payer through which they can either pre-approve, approve, or decline to pay open access APCs associated with authors at their institution or organization centrally. 
  • Provide them with a fully integrated online payment system which can flexibly accommodate different payment methods, including centralized Open Access pre-paid accounts (OAPAs) or aggregated billing arrangements where agreed. 
  • Automate all author APC payment requests and reminders as well as provide them the ability to login to track requests that are either awaiting approval, approved for payment, or paid, including real time updated balance on any pre-paid central accounts held with Sage. 
  • Provide detailed reporting through various administrative dashboard views and downloadable report functions. 

For Funders it will: 

  • Automate author compliance with any known Open Access funder mandates via Open Funder ID registry matches. 
  • Provide funders the ability to be set up as a Centralized Bill Payers to approve and pay for APCs directly in support of their open access mandates. 
  • Provide author declared funding information to funders, libraries and consortia.