Open Access (OA) is free of charge, common access to up to date knowlegde.
Its goal is to popularise scientific publications to make them accessible for use by scientists, students, entrepreneurs and the whole society. In practice, Open Access is carried out in the Green Model (publishing in open repositories), or the Gold Model (publishing in open or hybrid journals, which usually means covering the editorial cost by the author or his/her institution).

Within the limits of country-level consortial licences of the ICM Virtual Library of Science Open Access publishing programs have been launched in cooperation with several publishing companies. Each of them offers a limited pool of free of charge articles for all participating institutions. IPC PAS employees can participate in five of them to publish free of charge: Elsevier, Springer, ACS, IoP and RSC.

Terms of Open Access publishing
in particular publishing companies:

• American Chemical Society (ACS)
  Journal list (as of 19.01.23)
  ACS Open Access publishing guide
  Authors submitting articles for review in the ACS journal should note that at this stage (the “online manuscript submission process”) they fill out an on-line form in which they should select their affiliation from a list of institutions. It is also recommended, but not obligatory, to provide an email address from the domain of this institution. After the article is approved for publication, the author completes the Journal Publishing Agreement (JPA) form. The form automatically recognizes, on the basis of the previously indicated affiliation, whether the article is eligible for the program and offers the author the publication of OA under the program while maintaining the copyright. The author may also opt out of copyrights, which does not exclude from the program, but is not recommended by ICM, or choose to publish in the traditional model. If the author selects an OA publication, the system sends information about the article to ICM, which checks if the appropriate affiliation is given in the article and confirms the inclusion of the article in the program. Authors who, after accepting the article, did not receive a proposal to join the program, may report to ICM at the address wbn@icm.edu.pl attaching an active DOI link to the article, and if this link is not active, then the page (s) with the title, authors and affiliations from an accepted manuscript. Authors using the program may also obtain assistance with any stage of publication with ACS at support@services.acs.org.
  
  
• Elsevier OA program guide (pdf)
  Elsevier hybrid and gold open access journal list (updated 2024)
  
  
• IOP Publishing
  There is no limit of free of charge articles in Institute of Physics (IoP) program.
  Eligible journals are on list A under this link.
  IOP Open Access publishing guide
  The IOP recognizes articles eligible for the program on the basis of the affiliation provided by the corresponding author on the form when submitting the manuscript to the journal and, upon acceptance of the article for publication, forwards the article information to ICM. After checking whether the article provides the appropriate affiliation, ICM confirms the inclusion of the article in the program. The author fills in an additional form during the review or immediately after the acceptance of the article. In this form, the author has the option to choose to publish OA within the program and respecting the copyright. If an author declines to publish an OA or notifies the publisher that he wishes to pay for costs elsewhere, the article is not included in the program. Authors who, with the approval of the article, will not receive an OA publication proposal as part of the program, may contact ICM at the address wbn@icm.edu.pl attaching the page (s) with the title, authors and affiliations from the accepted manuscript. There is also a brochure about the program prepared by the publisher and information about the program on the publisher's website, but this information will still be updated.
  
  
• MDPI Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP)
  The programme allows publishing articles in the open access model with 10% disscount for authors affiliated in the IPC.
  Registration
  Journal list
  
  
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) - author guide (pdf).
  The list of journal titles covered by the agreement (updated 19.01.22)
  
  
• Scoap3 international programme
  
  
• Science Advances
  (up to 10 articles from Poland financed by the Ministry of Education and Science)
• Springer
  Program has been reactivated on 8 april 2024 with a limit of 1363 free articles for 2024.
  Journal list (updated 5 August 2023, including the ADIS collection)
  Springer - Poland Open Access agreement
  Open Access Systems Solution overview
  If you have any questions about open source publishing to hybrid journals, contact Springer Nature directly at oa.verification@springer.com. In case of further problems, please contact the WBN service at wbn@icm.edu.pl.

Open Access resources:

• Open Access publishing guide in NCN grants (in Polish)
  
• Journal Checker Tool (JCT) - journal search engine for Open Access publishing. A tool officialy recognized by NCN.
  
• Plan S - an international initiative for Open Access publishing.
  
• Sherpa Romeo - an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher Open Access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis.
  
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - largest Open Access full-text database, including more than 15,000 journals from various puplishers and all fields of science.