An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors to make a work available open access in either an open access journal or hybrid journal. This fee is usually paid by an author's institution or research funder rather than by the author themselves. Some publishers waive the fee in cases of hardship. An article processing charge does not guarantee that the author retains copyright to the work, or that it will be made available under a Creative Commons license.