Pick a specialty
Combined: a journal shows if it sits in at least one group you ticked.
Narrow to a Scopus specialty
Nothing on the ONOS APC list matches that.
A journal absent from this list cannot get ONOS-funded APC, whatever its impact factor.
If you have narrowed to one section, try Everything.
Eligibility check
Answer for one accepted article. The first block is hard gates — a No there ends the claim. The second is paperwork you need before opening the ONOS portal.
What ONOS pays for
ONOS is a central sector scheme under the Department of Higher Education, running since 1 January 2025. Besides subscription access to 30 publishers, it centrally funds negotiated APCs for selected fully open access journals, paid by INFLIBNET. The eligible list is set by subject expert groups and rebuilt each year.
Who can claim
- 2.1
Regular faculty, students, researchers and PIs of HEIs and R&D institutions with active ONOS registration; the institutional nodal officer certifies bonafide status.
- 2.1.1
You must be first author or corresponding author.
- 2.1.2
Documentary evidence of acceptance goes with the application.
- 2.1.3
Head of Institution authenticates the application.
- 2.1.4
Significant intellectual contribution, with a combined declaration signed by all authors in the prescribed format.
- 2.1.5
One claim per article.
Access model, metrics and quartile
Every journal on this list is fully open access by definition — clause 2.2 admits only fully OA titles, and clause 3.2 pays only for fully OA mode. A hybrid journal cannot appear here, and an optional-OA fee in a subscription journal is never reimbursed, whatever the journal's standing.
Quartile is a weaker filter than the one already applied. Eligibility needs the journal to sit in the top 1% of its Scopus subject area on CiteScore, SNIP or SJR, so these titles sit well inside Q1 on the indicator that qualified them. A journal can still be Q2 or lower on a different indicator or a different subject area, since Scopus assigns several.
Each journal row carries its SJR value, SJR best quartile, citations per document over two years, h-index and per-category quartiles, taken from the Scimago Journal Rank 2025 release and matched by ISSN. Citations per document is Scopus-based and behaves like an impact factor, but it is not one — the Clarivate JIF is licensed and is not included. If you need the JIF, or the APC amount each publisher charges, export those and merge them in from the panel above the results.
On this list 422 journals are Q1 on SJR, seven are Q2 and one is Q3, which is what the top 1% rule predicts: a journal can qualify on CiteScore or SNIP while sitting a quartile lower on SJR. Scimago's 2025 release does not carry an open access flag for 25 of the 431, mostly recent or renamed titles; those rows are marked, and the DOAJ link on the row settles it.
The APC amount does not affect eligibility. ONOS pays the negotiated charge for an eligible article from one common pool, first come first served, so a costly journal does not weaken your claim — it only draws more from the pool.
PubMed indexing
ONOS eligibility runs on Scopus, not PubMed, so the two lists do not have to agree. A journal can be top 1% on CiteScore and still not be indexed for MEDLINE, and that matters for anyone whose department, promotion committee or thesis rules count PubMed-indexed papers.
Every journal here has been checked against NLM's own journal list, matched by ISSN and by title, and the row says which way it went. 339 of the 431 are on the list, 92 are not. Within medicine and health sciences the coverage is near total, 196 of 203; beyond medicine it is 143 of 228, which is what you would expect of a biomedical index. The badge carries the MEDLINE abbreviation, so you can also see the form your citation will take.
One caution the badge cannot carry: NLM's list marks journals that appear in PubMed, and a title can be there through a PMC deposit rather than current MEDLINE indexing. If your committee counts MEDLINE specifically, open the NLM Catalog link on the row and read the indexing status on the record itself.
Which journals qualify
- 2.2
Fully open access journals in the top 1% on any one of CiteScore, SNIP or SJR. The top 1% is computed within each of the 27 Scopus subject areas, so a modest-looking specialty journal can qualify while a famous hybrid one does not. Publisher need not be an ONOS publisher.
- 2.2.1
INFLIBNET republishes the list yearly with DHE, on the ONOS website.
- 2.2.2
A journal dropped in a later year still covers articles accepted while it was listed, even if payment happens afterwards.
- 2.3
Only research articles count. Case reports, letters, editorials, commentaries and review-only formats are outside the definition as written.
How the claim moves
Register on the ONOS APC page with your institutional email, verified by OTP.
Select the journal from the drop-down; enter submission and acceptance dates and article details.
Affiliation verified by ONOS or your institute.
You and every co-author declare no other APC claim exists anywhere, Indian or foreign, public or private.
Invoice or payment details routed through the central account to the journal.
ONOS accepts subject to fund availability, or rejects with intimation.
INFLIBNET pays the publisher; TDS and other taxes deducted at source.
You are told what was paid, then confirm publication.
What still stops a valid claim
- 3.1
First come, first served from one common pool across all subjects. No quota is reserved for medicine.
- 3.2
Only fully open access mode is paid. Hybrid OA fees in subscription journals are not.
- 3.4
If a funding agency or government grant can pay the OA fee, or the APC is a budgeted project component, the article is not eligible. False declaration invites administrative and legal action.
- 3.5
The Core Committee may cap articles funded per author or institution.
The declaration you sign
The Declaration of Author's Contribution asks for the accepted title; each author's type of authorship, name as per the article and as per Aadhaar, nationality, affiliating institution and country; acceptance date; journal name and online ISSN; the journal's main Scopus subject area and the article's; publisher; and CRediT-style roles mapped to named authors.
You accept personal liability to return the whole APC if the article is retracted, or if the charge turns out to have been paid by another agency or shown as a project component. The Head of Institution certifies your status and undertakes institutional recovery if you do not repay.