Open Access

OA overview & benefits

All articles published in Journal of Sustainable Geosynthetics are made freely and permanently available online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers.

Authors retain copyright. Reuse is permitted under the article’s CC BY 4.0 license, which allows sharing and adaptation with attribution to the authors.

Benefits of Publishing Open Access

Choosing to publish your research openly brings a wide range of advantages that extend well beyond the academic community. Open access fosters broader visibility, encourages collaboration, and helps accelerate the progress of science.

Greater Reach and Influence

Open access publications are freely available to anyone with an internet connection, making your work more accessible to scholars, practitioners, and the public alike. This often results in a wider audience and, in many cases, increased citations compared to traditional paywalled articles.

Encouraging Cross-Disciplinary Engagement

Without access barriers, researchers from different fields can more easily discover and engage with your work. This kind of open exposure promotes interdisciplinary thinking and can lead to new collaborations or applications of your research in unexpected areas.

Supporting Global Collaboration

By making both publications and underlying data openly available, researchers across the globe — regardless of institutional affiliation or funding — can more readily contribute to, replicate, and build upon existing work, strengthening the global research community.

Reaching Beyond Academia

Open access allows policymakers, educators, healthcare professionals, journalists, and curious members of the public to benefit from scientific findings without relying on institutional subscriptions. This wider availability can help inform policy, education, and practice.

Quicker Uptake and Reuse

With permissive licensing, such as Creative Commons, others can reuse and build upon published work more efficiently. This accelerates the pace at which new ideas can be tested, refined, and applied.

Meeting Funding Requirements

An increasing number of funding bodies now require research outputs to be made openly accessible. Publishing in an open access journal helps authors comply with these policies without added complexity.

Article processing charges (APCs)

All articles published in Journal of Sustainable Geosynthetics are fully open access. To support this model, authors are required to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) once their manuscript is accepted for publication. This APC helps cover the full cost of the publishing process — from submission, coordinating peer review and editorial work to copyediting, digital archiving, and maintaining the article’s long-term accessibility online under a Creative Commons license.

The APC is determined at the point of acceptance and applies regardless of article length or number of figures. We do not impose word limits, nor do we charge extra for additional visual content, allowing authors the freedom to present their work as fully as needed. However, because we operate on a flat-fee model, we are unable to offer reduced rates for shorter submissions.

A one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) of USD 1,000 (charged upon acceptance) applies to papers accepted to Journal of Sustainable Geosynthetics after peer review. All authors are encouraged to plan ahead regarding their ability to cover the entire APC.

Waivers for World Bank low & lower‑middle‑income economies, please refer to Section Waivers & discounts in this page.

The journal does not charge any submission fees or page charges.

Taxes on Publication Charges

The prices quoted do not include any value-added tax (VAT), goods and services tax (GST), or other sales taxes. Tax may be charged in addition to the price shown where required by law. The amount of tax charged will be calculated at the point of sale and identified separately.

If you have a VAT, GST, or other sales tax identification number, you should provide this when requested.

If you or the party responsible for payment are tax exempt, instructions will be provided during the payment process regarding where and when to send the tax exemption certificate or other relevant documentation.

Waivers & discounts

Journal of Sustainable Geosynthetics offers APC waivers to papers whose corresponding authors are based in locations classified by the World Bank as low-income economies and lower-middle-income economies.

Please request your waiver or discount at the point of submission.

Please note that APC waivers and discounts for corresponding authors from low-income and lower-middle-income economies based on the following list of eligible countries and regions.

Funder compliance

We support immediate public access required by major funders, including the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy (effective July 1, 2025) and cOAlition S/Plan S policies, by publishing the Version of Record openly on our site under CC BY 4.0 and providing compliant metadata/deposit guidance.

Open Access Licensing

By default, all articles in Journal of Sustainable Geosynthetics are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). A license statement appears on each article page and in article metadata.

Depositing and Archiving

Published articles are assigned DOIs via Crossref.

Institutional or subject repositories

Long‑term preservation via PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) (for eligible content).

Acknowledging Funding

We encourage authors to clearly list all sources of research funding in their manuscript, including: Full name of the funding agency, Grant numbers, Any relevant funding program (e.g., Horizon Europe)

Many funders allow grant funds to be used to cover Article Processing Charges (APCs).

Author Support

We are here to help authors stay compliant with funder policies. If you have questions about Open Access licenses, funder requirements, or article deposits, our editorial and support team is ready to assist you.