Article processing charge
An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors to publish an article in an academic journal. It is common in open access journals (hybrid or fully open)[1][2] as well as in fully closed journals.[3] This fee is usually paid by an author's institution or research funder rather than by the author themselves.[4] It may be waived in cases of hardship.[5]
Contents
Usage
Journals use a variety of ways to generate the income required to cover publishing costs, such as subsidies from institutions[6] and subscriptions. A majority of open access journals do not charge article processing charges,[7] but a significant and growing number of them do.[8] They are the most common funding method for professionally published open access articles.[9]
Different academic publishers have widely varying levels of fees, from under $100 to over $3,000.[1] High fees are sometimes charged by traditional publishers in order to publish in a hybrid open access journal, which make an individual article in a subscription journal open access. The average APC for hybrid journals has been calculated to be almost twice as high as APCs from full open access publishers.[10] Journals with high impact factors from major publishers tend to have the highest APCs.[1] Many open access publishers, such as PLOS, waive their APCs for those who cannot afford to pay them.[5]
Open access articles often have a surcharge compared to a closed-access APC; for example the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences regularly charges $1,700 per article, with a surcharge of $1,350 for open-access.[11] Similarly, AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research charges $1000 for closed-access and $3500 for open-access.[12]
Even when publishers do not charge standard fees, excess or overlength fees might still apply after a certain number of pages or publication units is exceeded;[12][13] additional fees might exist for color figures,[11] primarily for print journals that are not online-only.
While publication charges occur upon article acceptance, article submission fees are charged prior to the start of peer review; they are not uncommon among journals in, e.g., finance and economics.[14] Page charge may refer to either publication or submission fees.
See also
- Vanity press, a book publisher that charges publication fees with no selection criteria
References
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- ↑ Richard Van Noorden, "Open access: The true cost of science publishing", Nature 495, 426–429 (28 March 2013) doi:10.1038/495426a [1]
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- ↑ 11.0 11.1 PNAS, Procedures for Submitting Manuscripts
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 American Geophysical Union publication fee table
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Further reading
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Curb, L. A., & Abramson, C.I. (2012) An examination of author-paid charges in science journals. Comprehensive Psychology, 1, 4.
- Guy, M., Holl, A. (2015) Article Processing Charges. Briefing Paper, PASTEUR4OA project
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