Academics are driven to publish quickly and in large quantities, but this clashes with the slowness and high selectivity of many traditional subscription journals. APC journals take advantage of this scarcity in traditional journals, providing an expensive loophole to the need to publish in international journals with an impact factor.

Regards,

It is difficult for a 3rd world scientific community to pay APC charges. Though open acess is good but the quality of research papers published in these journals have drastically reduced. The scientific community is behind the IF which doesn't have any correlation with quality. There is a need to have journals run by scientific community freely accessible to the researchers without APC. When public money is used to publish a paper in APC journals that money can be explored for this purpose also.

"Its only a pdf to be put online" - no, there are more costs for the publisher. But you are right, their profits are high. - This question has been discussed many times before. See, e.g., these discussions:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_article_processing_charge_and_why_the_publication_fee_is_charged_to_Author

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Article_Processing_Charge

https://www.researchgate.net/post/A_research_paper_costs_more_to_publish_than_a_Car

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publishing_open_access_for_1000

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_Pay_and_Publish_versus_Free_Publication_in_terms_of_publishing

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-quite-the-same-a-predatory-journal-and-a-journal-that-charges-for-publishing

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_all_journals_that_charge_publication_fees_predatory

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_ACTUAL_COST_OF_A_PUBLICATION

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_true_that_only_open_access_journals_charge_publication_fee_while_subscription_journals_do_not_charge

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_impact_of_high_article_processing_charges_on_research_publication_activities_in_low_and_middle_income_countries

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-does-someone-pay-to-publish-in-this-journal

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_does_Nature_Open_Access_charge_so_much_to_publish

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_opinion_on_the_journals_where_you_pay_a_fee_to_be_able_to_publish_your_paper

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Journal_Publication_fee

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-fair-for-peer-reviewed-international-Journals-to-charge-exorbitant-processing-fees

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publication_game_and_charges_inflation

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_think_that_the_academic_publishing_industry_exploits_scholars

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_know_the_journals_which_paid_royalties_to_authors

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_many_researchers_think_publishers_journals_should_pay_for_their_content_and_also_for_peer_review

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Free_science_What_do_you_think_about_paying_to_read_a_scientific_article_even_though_you_know_that_its_authors_dont_get_paid_for_it

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_do_journals_request_authors_to_pay_article_publication_charges_before_publication_and_require_authors_to_pay_before_access

Here are some of my replies from several previous discussions:

There is no direct connection between the subscription business model of a journal and publication fees. Whether there is a publication fee or not depends on the finance model of the journal in general. Some journals have low costs and sells well or get donations, so they may publish without fees for authors.

The publication of scientific articles always costs money (paying the staff of the publisher, servers, printing costs, taxes, ...). Most of the large scientific journals are being published on the basis of subcriptions by libraries, at least partially. Other parts of their financial models are APCs (Article Processing Charges) and payments for downloading articles. The question is, who raises this money - the readers, the authors or third institutions; at least not the publishers, who are private enterprises and have to work economically. To demand financing from the publishers is unrealistic. Today there are not enough paying subscribers, so that the authors, sponsors or readers have to pay.

The real question is who can finance the publication. Since there are not enough subscribers for the many journals and the authors often cannot cover the costs, sponsors must be sought. Publication costs must be taken into account as early as the research planning stage.

For developing countries the question is how these additional costs for publication of the results can be raised. There is no such thing as "free" publication, in all cases someone has to pay the costs.

The problem of financing scientific publications is as old as science is. When you read, e.g., an extended biography of Johannes Kepler (beginning of 17th century), you will learn about his problems when seaking financial support for printing his works. "Open access and free of charge" does not mean that it is free of costs. In this case, an institution is paying the costs of staff, server maintainance, printing, etc. To "create a platform in which we control our science and make it completely free of access", there has to be an international organization which will organize and finance it. You will need a staff similar to privat publishers. Where will its finances come from? Those who are familiar with international organizations like UN know the difficulties of organizing large projects on an international level. If you wish a single platform for all sciences, the difficulties will be tremendous. It is possible to publish free and open-access journals at the level of institutes and societies, but each of them is for a narrow field. Although I agree that a "free" and open access platform for all sciences would be a nice thing, I do not see ways to realize it.

Publishers are privat enterprises, so they have to pay their staff, pay for their offices, for all hardware, for software, for advertisement, pay taxes, etc. Large publishers with high-ranking journals are mostly stock companies or similar and therefore they also have to pay dividends to stockholders. However, as for all companies it is nearly impossible to get details of their business model.

Publication fees are mainly there to cover the publisher's costs, fully or partially. The profit comes from the sale of printed or online journals by subscription and the sale of individual articles as PDF files.

Extreme costs for publishing are also a consequence of the monopolization. The tendency to publish only in "high-impact" journals is another reason for monopolization. This tendency is a consequence of the "fixation on bibliometric indicators" by the actors in science governance - see demand No. 3 of the petition "Stop Tracking Science" (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Petition_Stop_Tracking_Science).

Publishing is a private business. Therefore, when you ask whether high costs for open access are ethical or not you may also ask whether profits of billions of dollars by private companies like Google, Amazon, etc. and by their private owners are ethical in general. Indeed, the profit rates of some large publishers are extremely high. One of the reasons is the run for high-impact journals and the monopolization which follows from this preference. Although there are many small publishers, the free market does not really work. Another negative side of the impact-factor fetish are manipulation, fraud and other scientific misconduct.

I do not agree at all with the way some publishers do business. However, this is a free market as any other business. There is no worldwide conspiracy by publishers to suck scientists dry. If there is so much money to be made here, why aren't there more big publishers? Of course, there is also monopolization, as everywhere in the economy. But there are also many small publishers and small journals. The problem also lies with the scientists themselves. The greed for high-impact journals leads to the situation that some journals hardly need to fear competition. The whole problem is very complex, and there is no point in portraying publishers as the bogeymen. It requires concrete proposals for improvement. - One of the problems is also that more and more is published and less and less is read. Libraries are no longer able to acquire all the books and journals. As a result, sales figures are falling, so publishers have to raise prices. A vicious circle. More than 50 years ago, Polish philosopher and science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem satirically envisioned a future in which scientists get paid if they don't publish anything. As soon as they publish something, they get a pay cut.

Correct sir, and one thing ehen someone submit manuscript and editor don't want to publish even manuscript under scope of journal. Just reply that "we are accepting new findings however your research have quality and under scope of our journal so we cannot send in-depth for review". And same time we are seeing that some of papers have in current issues with open access that mean someone can afford money pay them and what they are doing publshed it in open access. Correct sir now some of the prestigious journals are doing business rather than quality of publication.

Today publisher are making money and publish portridge. papers which is of not that quality to b published in high impact, are published by adding authors from other institute which doesn't know what's this work worth off. Only they get publication for their academic progress and today author from one area publish in that area which is of no where use

Its all about making money. Thanks to publishers like mdpi, who is popularized this buisnes model.

Open Access gained attention, but the source of the problem is merely tackled. As long as people continue finding ways to justify the current publications fees, it will become more popular.

For example, Germany's Project DEAL is proud to close a deal with Springer Nature and pay 2750 Euros Publish-and-Read fee. Either I misunderstand the concept entirely, or I will never be able to adapt myself to the way of thinking in academia. I conduct my research as a state-funded employee in a state university using programs almost entirely funded by the taxpayers in the very same state, and I gladly help journals as a reviewer without getting paid in accord with the good old tradition of science. Well, I am just a graduate student about to finish his Ph.D., I can hardly do more. Once I want my research to be reached, the solution to making the whole process Open Access, the process financed by the public and the effort from my own time, is to pay even more funds. Everything turns into a simple supply-demand problem in the free market. I even heard people saying, "if it is too expensive there, find somewhere else" and "if that were too profitable, everybody would start journals.". Well, thank you for explaining the concept of cost and profit. I might need it later on.

Most of the blame goes to academicians themselves. We all look for high-impact journals that gladly play the game as they wish. Most of them are already monopolized in particular niches. Everybody is glad to pay X amount of money for Open Access as long as it brings more citations and doesn't make you scrap the barrel later. Maybe next year, maybe in five years, that boosted IF, h-index will get you some fund or a tenure. A vicious cycle that does not comply with what I used to think of being a scientist. Almost at the end of my Ph.D., I hardly see any correlation between the citations of my publications and the value I think I managed to put into them. I would go crazy if I stay in academia for another 15 years and still receive the same acknowledgment asymmetry to the value of my publications. I hope I didn't deflect the topic. My comment is just incoherent thoughts of a graduate student with just small motivation to finish his Ph.D.

An open-access publication in fact requires huge amounts of processing fees, this does not help academia very much, but we have to in order to allow the world to present its works to the readers

For high paid journals hardly 5% authours are paying APC charges from their own pocket, rest 95% are just circulating money from one body to another.

It is easy to raise questions against communities, here hardly any scientist at individual level is paying attention to quality work.

I am really sorry to say that this is a kinda polite bussniss.

For example, we submit an article to the Journal of Herbal Medicines on 20-01-2021, After 6 months we got a minor revision and we submit it, accordinly. After 4 months the reviwers timely submitted their responses (as per 'Elsevier office Journal support information's) and our article awaiting for the Editior response and yeastrday they rejected our MS without any reason.

As a studnet I can understand how much my future suffered, waiting for soo long (after 16 months), if there were any serious problem/issues in the MS why Editor send it to reviwers?, why reviwers suggest it for minor revision and most imoportantly why Cheif Editor take soo blind decision/rejection without any solid reason.

I think, would be better to be a good researcher, we must have an economic source for the APC of journals, otherwise.....