page_title: Open access
section_title: Article processing charges
hierarchical_section_title: Open access / Features / Funding / Article processing charges
caption_attribution_description: English: Article Processing Charges for 1504 Gold OA journals in DOAJ (data from 2019). Ref: https://doaj.org/faq#alldata
context_page_description: Open access is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. With open access strictly defined, or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright.
  The main focus of the open access movement is "peer reviewed research literature." Historically, this has centered mainly on print-based academic journals. Whereas conventional journals cover publishing costs through access tolls such as subscriptions, site licenses or pay-per-view charges, open-access journals are characterised by funding models which do not require the reader to pay to read the journal's contents. Open access can be applied to all forms of published research output, including peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed academic journal articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, monographs, and images.
context_section_description: Some open access journals (under the gold, and hybrid models) generate revenue by charging publication fees in order to make the work openly available at the time of publication. The money might come from the author but more often comes from the author's research grant or employer. While the payments are typically incurred per article published (e.g. BMC or PLOS journals), some journals apply them per manuscript submitted (e.g. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics until recently) or per author (e.g. PeerJ).
  Charges typically range from $1,000–$2,000 but can be under $10 or over $5,000. APCs vary greatly depending on subject and region and are most common in scientific and medical journals (43% and 47% respectively), and lowest in arts and humanities journals (0% and 4% respectively). APCs also can also depend on a journal's impact factor. Some publishers (e.g. eLife and Ubiquity Press) have released estimates of their direct and indirect costs that set their APCs. Hybrid OA generally costs more than gold OA and can offer a lower quality of service. A particularly controversial practice in hybrid open access journals is "double dipping", where both authors and subscribers are charged.
  By comparison, journal subscriptions equate to $3,500–$4,000 per article published by an institution, but are highly variable by publisher (and some charge page fees separately). This has led to the assessment that there is enough money "within the system" to enable full transition to OA. However, there is ongoing discussion about whether the change-over offers an opportunity to become more cost-effective or promotes more equitable participation in publication. Concern has been noted that increasing subscription journal prices will be mirrored by rising APCs, creating a barrier to less financial privileged authors. Some gold OA publishers will waive all or part of the fee for authors from less developed economies. Steps are normally taken to ensure that peer reviewers do not know whether authors have requested, or been granted, fee waivers, or to ensure that every paper is approved by an independent editor with no financial stake in the journal. The main argument against requiring authors to pay a fee, is the risk to the peer review system, diminishing the overall quality of scientific journal publishing.
caption: Article processing charges by gold OA journals in DOAJ.[60]
exif: {}