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.[1][2][3] This fee may be paid by the author, the author's institution, or their research funder.[4] Some publishers waive the fee in cases of hardship or geographic location, but this is not a widespread practice.[5] 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.[citation needed]