APC Waiver Policy

The Criterion: An International Journal in English (ISSN 0976-8165) is an open-access journal. Readers never pay to access our articles. To cover the costs of peer review, editing, Crossref DOI registration and hosting, an article processing charge (APC) is payable only after a manuscript has been accepted. The current charges are listed on the Submission page.

We do not want the APC to prevent good research from being published. Waivers are therefore offered on the following clear and fixed basis.

Who is eligible

Full waiver (100%): corresponding authors whose institution is located in a country on the Research4Life Group A list.
Partial waiver (50%): corresponding authors whose institution is located in a country on the Research4Life Group B list.

Eligibility is checked against the Research4Life list in force on the date of submission. No other waivers or discounts are offered.

How to request a waiver

The corresponding author should request the waiver at the time of submission by writing to editor@the-criterion.com, stating the manuscript title and the country of the author’s institution.
Waiver requests made after acceptance cannot be considered.
No payment is requested before acceptance, so no refund process is needed.

Editorial independence

Waiver requests are handled by the editorial office separately from peer review. Reviewers are never informed of a waiver request, and a request has no effect on the editorial decision. Every manuscript is assessed on its scholarly merit alone, in line with our Publication Ethics policy.

Questions

For any question about this policy, please contact editor@the-criterion.com.

Policy effective from 18 October 2026.