Article processing charge may be a barrier to publishing

Abstract

Recently most of the journals charge a fee known as article processing charge (APC) for publication of an article. These charges can vary from journal to journal. This publication fee is often paid by the author, the author’s institution, or their research funder organization. Though low- and middle-income countries are usually exempted from APC, India does not come under the category of waiver by most of the journals that ask for the APC. Most of the Indian institutes do not pay for publication and research thus individual researcher suffers huge financial burden due to APC. Hence, less affluent institutions, scholars, and students are unable to publish their work due to these barriers. These articles highlight the challenges faced by authors and solutions for publishers and journals to avoid APCs.

Publishing in academia is a particularly important career step but is highly competitive and can be a rewarding professional endeavour. Medical publishing embraces to offer the most validated and modern diagnostic and therapeutic options for the patients. It also enhances knowledge on recent advances and management options about a particular condition which can then be applied in the care of present and future patients.¹

It is difficult to find out how many scientific journals there are, but several estimates point to around 30,000, with close to two million articles published each year and a suggestion that global scientific output doubles every nine years.² Academic publishing is undergoing major changes, as it makes the transition from the print to the electronic format.³ An important trend, particularly with respect to journals in humanities and sciences, is open access (OA) via the internet. The traditional model of publishing has been subscription-based on author and readership.⁴ Accepted articles by journals are available to the peer academic community on personal subscription to a particular journal or through institutional access. This is a costly affair for individuals due to subscription charges payable for a one-off download or yearly payment and is particularly relevant in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Libraries, institutions and peer to peer lending, obviate some of the difficulties in accessing research but not all.

In OA publishing, a journal article is made available free for all on the web and the internet by the publisher at the time of publication. But this comes at a cost to the author. In the OA model, authors have to pay for publishing their work, as an article processing charge (APC), which could be anywhere between a few hundred to a few thousand US dollars. It has been suggested offering an alternative way of scholarly publishing.⁵ The APC is also known as a publication fee, is charged to authors to make their work available as OA in either an OA journal or a Hybrid journal.⁴ This fee may be paid by the author, the author’s institution, or their research funder organization. The APC comprises fees related to publishing operations and projects, journal publication, editorial fees, the fee for administering the peer review system, and for marketing and communication. This broader way of accessing and academic publication is perceived to be an open, internet-based alternative to traditional publishing⁵ There are various advantages of publishing as an OA (Table 1). The publications are freely available online to readers at no cost. This allows the possibility of broader distribution and increased visibility over subscription content leading to increased chances of usage and citations. Contents published under some Creative Commons (CC) licenses e.g. Creative Commons-BY (Attribution) license allows digital archiving and sharing so long attribution is given to the author.⁶ This allows greater public engagement as those without personal or institutional subscriptions can access the latest research.

Table 1.

Features of Open access and Standard subscription academic journals.

Features	Open access journals	Standard subscription journals
Article Processing Charges (APC)	Payable	Not required
Readership	Free for anyone	Restricted; on payment or subscription
Licenses	Creative Common Licenses	Copyright
Article sharing	Allowed	Limitations
Article downloads	Significantly more	Lesser
Rejection rate	Lesser	More
Citations	Slightly more (10–20%)	Slightly lesser
Speed of Publication	Faster	Slower
Quality of Articles	? Inferior (Contentious)	Superior
Journal Prestige	Lesser	More
Review process	Peer- review	Peer- review
Payments to Reviewers	Usually none	None
Payment to Editors	To some Editors and discounts on APC to others	Usually none, except for some full- timers

Currently several orthopaedic journals are requiring an APC e.g. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Journal of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, World Journal of Orthopaedics, and Journal of Orthopaedic Translation being some leading examples.

It has been acknowledged that there is a perceived crisis in academic publishing, as the cost of publishing is increasing rapidly and significantly.⁷ The apparent crisis has also to do with the combined pressure of budget cuts at the Universities and increased costs for subscription journals. Although the transition to OA publishing is evident, it also opens opportunities for unscrupulous online “vanity presses” to exploit authors for profit as ‘Predatory journals’.⁸

Shifting the burden of the cost of academic publishing to the author may not be suitable for researchers from LMIC who traditionally face financial constraints. Though some of the OA publishers provide full or partial waivers on APC to researchers from LMIC,³ this is not universal, e.g., India does not come under the category of waiver by most of the journals that ask for APC. Most of the Indian institutes do not pay for publication and research. Hence, the funding opportunities available for Indian researchers are limited, and therefore many of the less affluent institutions, scholars, and students are unable to publish their work. Doctors and researchers from Indian medical institutes have plenty of clinical material and the potential to write and publish, however, APC has led to limited options to submit academic papers. Third-world countries, due to the weaker currency are unable to pay APC as the amount payable becomes a huge financial burden for an individual researcher without any institutional support. Thus, they suffer from publishing their valuable contribution. English language copy-editing services may or may not be included in the APC. This leads to a problem in non-English speaking countries, like India, and adds extra monetary onus to the authors. There is a high rejection rate in the journals with high impact factors especially for authors from LMIC.⁹ These challenges have raised concerns as to whether publishers are exploiting the authors in a way that those who are missing the OA option is leading to Predatory Publishing.^8,10

The solution to this issue could lie in the libraries of academic institutions subscribing to the journals, with the publishers providing OA membership to the Institutions for their users. The journals could also be financially supported by their respective orthopaedic associations or societies e.g., the Journal of Clinical Orthopaedics and Trauma, Indian Journal of Orthopaedics, Journal of Orthopaedics, Journal of Trauma and Rehabilitation (JOTR) do not essentially require APC as these are supported by their parent organization and also have a Hybrid option for the authors to go for OA if desired. Recently some orthopaedic journals (e.g., American Journal of Sports Medicine, Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, and The Bone & Joint Journal) have started their ‘sister’ journals and made these as an OA, which may be a good alternative to balance revenue for their main non-OA journal.

There has been a new initiative started and proposed to support authors. It is suggested OA model of publishing be divided into Green OA and Platinum OA. - Platinum open access means permanent and free access to published scientific works for readers with no publication fees for the authors. (e.g. Asian Spine Journal. https://www.asianspinejournal.org/authors/processing_charge.php). In the green or self-archiving model, the author deposits a version (usually a pre-production version) of the article in a freely accessible repository. Which version of the article is allowed to be deposited and whether there is an embargo period depends on the policies of the publisher. Green OA and Platinum OA business models, which use advertising, subsidies, and volunteer work contributions etc. for sustenance may thus be proposed as possible solutions, as several Indian society journals are published with platinum OA. This mode may be sustainable in the long run in some scenarios.¹¹

Source of funding

None.

Funding for the study

None.

Declaration of competing interest

None.