Publication fees

We believe that all research should be freely available. To support this policy, authors of research papers are asked to pay a publication fee of $3,500 CDN plus applicable sales tax upon acceptance of their paper. There are no colour or page charges.

Whether an author group is able to pay the publication fee does not affect editorial decision-making. Non-research articles (e.g., clinical images, case reports, commentaries, analyses, narrative reviews, humanities, etc.) are not subject to the publication fee.

Taxes

Author groups whose research paper is accepted, and whose corresponding author resides in Canada, must pay taxes (GST/HST) on the above-mentioned fee. The taxation rate differs per province, as follows:  

Partial or complete fee waivers

CMAJ will waive all or part of its publication fees for the following authors:

Authors from lower income countries -- CMAJ uses Research4Life's criteria to determine eligibility for publication fee waivers. Authors from Group A are eligible for a 100% fee waiver while authors from Group B are eligible for a 50% fee waiver.

Student authors -- Author groups composed of: a) a majority of students who do not hold a doctoral degree (PhD or MD), and which b) contain a maximum of 2 PhD or MD holders, are eligible for a 25% discount on their publication fee. 

If you fall into one of the above categories and would like to apply for a fee waiver, please email the editorial office before you submit your manuscript. Please include a complete author list including affiliations and completed degrees. Please do not request a fee waiver if you do not meet the above criteria as it will not be approved.

Refund policy

If for any reason (e.g., plagiarism, fraudulent data and other legal issues) during the production process the publisher decides not to publish an accepted research paper, the author will be reimbursed the publication fee.