When open access publishing was fledgling, some good journals opted to start their article processing charges (APC) at low to moderate levels and increase the fees gradually. Some journals belonging to the big names in academic publishing tended to set their fees quite high.
This disparity made a section of the academic/ scientific community (names withheld) to erroneously believe that low APCs were a feature of predatory and low quality journals while high APCs were characteristic of high quality, high impact journals.
Therefore, the question is: Is the amount of article processing charge an indicator of journal quality?
Daniel - no this is not a quality indicator. A predatory journal can charge what it wants to - and hopes that the audience is prepared to do so. There is no immediate correlation between cost and quality - which is why all authors should be immediately wary as to they are charged ans what they are willing to pay. Personally, I don't pay anything unless I am sure of the credentials of the publisher - and I advise the same of all authors.
I certainly do not think so. Many good journals publish without any APC, but it can not be denied that many of the good journals are charging a hefty amount. Being a researcher from India, when you have to pay in $ or Euros, it takes some extra toll....somehow things workout and that's SCIENCE.
APC and quality of journals are not connected together. APC is a managing issue, while quality of the journal is a scientific process that depends on the quality of reviewers and editors for the specific journal.
Dear Oshi, I also do not think there is a correlation between the publication charges (submission fee + APC) and quality and/or impact of a journal, in GENERAL. However, if we make the question more specific to:
do the publication charges of OPEN ACCESS journals, EXCLUDING PREDATORY journals correlate with the CITATION-BASED IMPACT (e,g. Impact factor)?, probably a detailed investigation could provide a different answer.
Dear Manjula, thank you for this contribution. You are right. However, part of the problem is that some people that journals that place low charges are likely to be predatory.
Dear Daniel Oshi ,
There is no link between quality and APC for multiple reasons. One reason is that a substantial number of journals with high impact factor are not open access journals and you can publish without APC (some charge for colour etc.).
However you see, as you indicated yourself, publishers tend to increase their charge upon increased impact factor. I checked for two publishers some of their journals:
MDPI:
Biomedicines. Indexed in ESCI-1000 CHF
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. Impact Factor: 1.840 (2018)-1000 CHF
Entropy. Impact Factor: 2.419 (2018)-1600 CHF
Antibiotics. Impact Factor: 2.921 (2018)-1200 CHF
International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Impact Factor: 4.183 (2018)-1800 CHF
Cells. Impact Factor: 5.656 (2018)-1800 CHF
Elsevier:
Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports (BB Reports). No impact factor (yet).-USD 1700
Analytica Chimica Acta: X. No impact factor (yet).-USD 1850
Biophysical Journal. Impact Factor: 3.665 (2018)-USD 2500
iScience. No impact factor (yet) but almost certainly will be high-USD 3000
Cell Reports. Impact Factor: 7.815 (2018)- USD 5200
Cell. Impact Factor: 36.216 (2018)-USD 9000
So there is some link between APC and impact factor. But of course the other way around is not true: low costs does not mean low quality (or automatically predatory).
For example Elsevier publish Biomedical Journal. Impact Factor: 2.301 (2018) for free and various Springer journals with reasonable impact factors are sponsored by institutes and are consequently for free.
Best regards.
Thank you so much for your contribution and for the specific examples used to illustrate your analysis.
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