Open Access at Rockefeller University Press

Rockefeller University Press (RUP) has made Open Access (OA) publishing a core part of its mission since 2001, when all research articles were made free to the public six months after publication. In 2017, RUP began offering an Open Access option to all authors of research articles, and in 2018 launched the fully Open Access online journal Life Science Alliance (LSA) in collaboration with EMBO Press and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. In 2025, RUP launched the fully Open Access Journal of Human Immunity (JHI),  published in partnership with the International Alliance for Primary Immunodeficiency Societies (IAPIDS).

Our mission is to disseminate the research we publish as widely as possible, for the benefit of all, and we believe Open Access is crucial to doing so.

Pathways to Open Access

Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), and Journal of General Physiology (JGP) are hybrid journals, publishing Open Access content that is immediately available to the public under a CC-BY license as well as content that is free to the public six months after publication under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.

Authors can publish their articles Open Access in the following ways:

• Authors can pay our Open Access charge to publish their article immediately available to the public under a CC-BY license. An author’s institution or funder may cover the Open Access fee.
• RUP has Read-and-Publish agreements with institutions across the world to accelerate transitioning to fully Open Access. To address inequities in publishing, RUP’s policy is to allow primary corresponding authors based in lower- and middle-income countries to publish Open Access without incurring additional financial burden. Libraries interested in joining an RUP Read-and-Publish agreement can contact [email protected].
• RUP permits authors to publish their author accepted manuscript publicly without embargo, under a CC-BY license, in the archive or repository of their/their funder’s choice.

Our pathways to Open Access compliance ensure that we are supporting the diversity of the scholarly community in finding different ways to make vitally needed research available to all.

RUP Subscription Price Transparency

RUP has implemented a transparent pricing model since 2021 for new and renewed subscriptions to JCB, JEM, and JGP. With a focus on transparency and sustainability, our model ensures that we are not receiving subscription revenue from articles published as Open Access. This model allows us to establish our journals' prices in a transparent, fair, and sustainable way, and affects each of our four subscription tiers. Learn more about the model in detail here.