Article Charges FAQ

Q: Why Charges?
Open access publishing is not without costs. Academia Publishing defrays these costs through article-processing charges because it does not have subscription charges for its research content. The company instead believes that immediate, worldwide, barrier-free, open access to the full text of research articles is in the best interests of the scientific community.

Q: What do the article-processing charges pay for?
Immediate, worldwide open access to the full article text
Developing and maintaining electronic tools for peer review and publication
Preparation in various formats for online publication
Securing inclusion in CrossRef, enabling electronic citation in other journals that are available.

Can Submitting Authors request for discount in article-processing charges?
Academia Publishing offers various discounts on APCs. The discounts are exclusive of each other and cannot be accumulated.

Why a flat charge rather than one based on page numbers?
The size of an article is a poor indicator of the actual amount of work involved in obtaining peer reviews and in preparing the article for publication. A more useful discriminator might be the state an article is in when submitted, and its complexity, but the lack of objective tools to measure these has led us to conclude that a flat fee is the fairest approach at this stage.

Who is responsible for making the payment?
Whoever submits the manuscript is responsible for making or arranging the payment (for instance, via his or her institution).

The submitting author needs to arrange payment of the article-processing charge unless a waiver has been granted, or your institution has covered the cost through a membership scheme.

The submitting author must confirm, at the time of submission, that they will organize payment should the article be accepted for publication.

Following peer review, once a manuscript has received editorial acceptance in principle, the article-processing charge becomes payable and formatting checks on the manuscript will commence. Once formatting checks are completed, and payment of the article-processing charge has been received, the article will be published.

Payment can be made by the following method:
Invoice payment (Bank Transfer) is due after receiving editorial acceptance in principle.
Prompt payment is advised as the article will not be published until payment is received.

Can charges be waived if the author cannot pay?
Individual waiver requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis and may be granted in cases of lack of funds. To apply for a waiver please request one during the submission process. A decision on the waiver will normally be made within two working days. Submission of the article to the journal can then be completed.

Article-processing charge: Authors or sponsoring body are required to pay an article-processing charge of $2950 for each article accepted for publication. Authors may contact the editorial office to request for discount in article-processing charge. A limited amount of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editorial judgment. If the submitting author’s institution is a member of Academia Publishing, the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership. Please note that the membership is only automatically recognized on submission if the submitting author is based at the member institution.