Why should I consider an institutional membership? – JMIR Publications

Regardless of whether you are a Principal Investigator, Director of a Lab or small research unit, a Department Chair, Serials Acquisition Librarian, Director of Knowledge Dissemination of an Institution, PR/Communications Director of a Company or Dean of a University, you should consider purchasing an institutional membership with fee waivers for your organization.

Encourages Publication

An institutional membership removes the burden of having to pay an APF/APC on a per-article basis for your faculty or students or employees of your organization - they can publish in JMIR journals free of charge.

Faster Publication, no overhead costs, and delays for invoice processing

Because we do not have to wait for an Article Processing Fee to be paid, we can move the paper to production/copyediting immediately after acceptance. On the other hand, if we wait for institutional payments, we often have to wait 2-4 weeks or longer until these payments are received

Institutional memberships lead to significant cost savings.

For example, a 3-year Silver membership costs $6000 but covers the APF for up to 3 articles, which is a $8850 value with current APF-prices [even more if APFs go up].

Keep publishing even if your current grant/funding ends

Memberships can be between 3-10 years in duration, and essentially pre-pay for future articles, which can be published free of charge.

Showcase your research unit/department/institution

Each institutional member gets a homepage (TOC) like this listing all papers published under the membership scheme, showcasing the productivity and impact of your research group.

i-Silver Membership: Institutional membership without being tied to an institution

The i-Silver membership program (Individual Memberships with APF waivers) is similar to departmental memberships, but membership is tied to an individual researcher rather than departments, i.e. we waive APFs for any manuscripts where the individual member is an author or coauthor.

There are further advantages to the i-Silver membership program, for example, the individual member can change affiliations and still get APFs waived.
Individual membership with APF waivers is also a good mechanism enabling you to use your current funding to support APFs for up to 10 years into the future. As an aside, your personal APF waiver program may encourage colleagues to work with you on a publication.

Customized Deals/Institutional Agreements

An example of an existing (custom) institutional arrangement is the agreement with the University of California (APF Support for Corresponding Authors from the University of California). Details of institutional membership are negotiable.

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