Many magazines (I am tempted to say "the majority") are free to publish. The model of most scientific publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, etc.) is to recover their fees by charging libraries for subscriptions.

However, many scientists do not like that model because it forces research behind the subscription payment walls.

The alternative, open access journals, often imposes charges for article processing. But it is a myth that "open access = author pays". There are many misunderstandings (not to mention deliberate misinformation) about the cost of open access publishing.

There is a good tool to examine the costs of open access journals here: Open Access Rate Index. It allows you to search by research field.

Even open access publications that normally charge item processing fees (for example, PLOS ONE) often have a policy to allow exemptions from their fees.

Good journals may not charge you any fees as they are sponsored, but then the publication will not be in OPEN ACCESS.

You are perfectly right with your question. Some journals charge so high just to publish an article. What is so disheartening is that when you pay your monies they stop corresponding with you; they don't even respond to your mail. As I write this comment, I have falling victim to one of such journal.

Hi,

The subscription journals (not open access) will not charge processing fees, but the publishers will ask you to give up the copyrights of your paper to them, that is, if your paper is published in a subscription journal you loose your copyrights.

see my article Article Socially just publishing: Implications for geographers and t...

IN fact, there is a number of subscription journals which however do charge publication fees without offering open access (referring to them e.g. as to the page charges), see e.g.

http://cofactorscience.com/blog/author-charges

In general, there are many publications and blog posts on the subject, see e.g.

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/09/07/how-much-does-publishing-cost/

Wow! Still following

I can answer as per my experience.

I have reviewed some articles of some famous journal hosting companies who take a good amount of money from the authors.

But they did not gave me any money for that work.

I am associated closely with one journal for last 7 years. Presently, it is indexed by Thomson Reuters in ESCI category. It is a open access , peer reviewed journal, but is kept totally FREE for both the authors and the viewers. I perform works without taking any payment. One organisation supply the expenditure.

For only online publication of last issue (December, 2017), we have paid INR Rs. 25000.00 ( Twenty five thousand). In USD, it is about 400.

Many magazines (I am tempted to say "the majority") are free to publish. The model of most scientific publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, etc.) is to recover their fees by charging libraries for subscriptions.

However, many scientists do not like that model because it forces research behind the subscription payment walls.

The alternative, open access journals, often imposes charges for article processing. But it is a myth that "open access = author pays". There are many misunderstandings (not to mention deliberate misinformation) about the cost of open access publishing.

There is a good tool to examine the costs of open access journals here: Open Access Rate Index. It allows you to search by research field.

Even open access publications that normally charge item processing fees (for example, PLOS ONE) often have a policy to allow exemptions from their fees.

I agree with ammar bader,,,Publication prices in journals are very expensive

Real cost of publishing a paper in the good journal should be ZERO. The findings or result with good research methodology itself a cost. Does not necessary to pay for publishing. Publishing writings in good journals usually not a criteria (Money) for publishing. Think about it.

The Real cost publishing a good paper in a good journal is nothing but pure knowledge.

In my field of Geotechnical Engineering, the top journals don't charge. I am not familiar with online journals.

I want to share my experience about the issue. I wanted to submit one of my paper to a reputable journal which is indexed in SCI-exp. But when I read the instructions, authors are asked to pay an article processing charge of 4050 USD. The fee is 3 times more when I compare it with my salary. This is very important journal in my field and I am sure the editor will like the scope of our paper, but I changed my mind about sending the paper becuse of the cost. It is weird because real science should be reachable but it is not everytime.

Good submissions

I have also done a listing, which I update every week, of social science journals that are legitimate, free [or up to $500 author cost, which is only for a very few] and open access. This now runs to a few hundred journals and I also note if they are listed in Scopus and Web of Science. There is no such listing for other fields like the natural sciences, engineering, medicine etc. - I developed this one intiially for my PhD students, and upkeep it manually. I hope it is useful. I will keep it going as long as I can. https://simonbatterbury.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/list-of-open-access-journals/

My simple answer is that just don't publish with such journal if you research is not Funded. The are so many open avenues.

This is a complex question. The core journal almost always have some payment - directly (price for processing) or indirectly named (suggested professional edition, etc.). This does not always mean quality of journal and open access version of your article. Some times open access has additional price, and all prices are high, including library subscription. So we are paying two or three times to read our own work. Excellent profit for publishers and Bloomberg evidences this. I thing that a critical evaluation of research and publishing policies and academic library subscriptions and open or public science are the solutions. Many of the top USA university and founding agencies do this already.

Slowly, please.

It may cost just paper and printing, or if you have a company - many thousands euro.

For a modes journal: In Europe, a journal must cover (at least) a secretary (2.000 euro/month), an editor (2.000 euro/month), webmaster (2.000 euro /month), paper and printing (per edition 5.000 euro to much more, depending on the quality and number of copies printed). If it prints one issue i.e. 10 articles per month, the costs of one article are about 1.000 euro. If a copy costs 20 euro and you sell 1000 - you are fine. So, not easy.

This is just very, very rough estimation of the real costs. It would be better if you had a reserve of another 10.000 euro. But if the university supports you, people will work for their university salary and you probably do not need to have any money at all…

Dear Dr. Pavlovic,

The days of print journals is already over. For open access publishing, webmaster is not needed. Hosting in website is a matter of half an hour for 50 articles and anybody can do it. The annual web hosting charge taken by hosting agencies is Rs. 2000 (@30 USD) in India. For preparation of PDF from corrected manuscript, the cost is@ Rs. 10000 (@150 USD) per issue.

Only a part time technical worker and active editorial board is needed. If the members of the editorial board do not take money (yes, it is honorary in many cases), the payment should only be given to the part time technical employee.In India, we can get that service annually maximum for Rs. 25000 (350 USD).

The main of the journal, the reviewing of the articles, is performed FREE by almost all the journals.

So, the total expenditure will be Rs.50000 (700 USD) for two issues with 50 articles each.

If you think it absurd, please convince any/all journal publishing authority to publish journals from Kolkata, India and I will arrange all of these.

There is only one reason behind such high APC etc., that is PROFIT.

Thanks.

Dear Shibabrata,

You may be right.

However, you are referring to just "a journal". Any journal. I was referring to some high quality journal that involves repeated interaction with the authors and the editors and an editorial board that is multi layer structure (editor, associated editor etc.). Let alone all printing jobs, transport, distribution, publicities, office hours etc. I edited a journal for 8 years in Paris and know quite well how it works. I also published in the journals you are probably referring to and have experience with those people also. Some of them are simply “criminals”. Predatory journals is the right expression. They publish ANYTHING, the articles that are not copyedited, the content is not examined, reviewes are virtual and not done! ANYTHING will be published, as long as the publications fees are paid. Those are “one man journals”. A single editor may publish even 3-5 or more journals simultaneously in this way. Those are "criminals", dear friend.

Dear Dr. Pavlovic,

I have only single question - how these journal get and maintain ISSN? Some of these are having good .... Value? How they get this ... Value which is given from P...d ?

Hello everyone@! We have excellent contributions and countless variables involved in the process. I followed the readings!

Dear Shibabrata,

I do not understand your question, please explain.

The ISSSN is obtained as soon as you register your journal to the police and the national librery. The ISSN is not a guarantee of quality. The impact factor (IF) is also no guarantee, but the probability that a journal with higher IF is of higher quality is only increased, as compared to a journal with low IF. This is all.

In some cases National Library is not responsible for ISSN. In this cases the country have a National ISSN Center. I agree that ISSN and JIF not necessary are guarantee of quality. But JIF and SJR (of SciMago) indicate editorial quality (normalization) of journals and level of use (citations) of the contents and provide us a good orientation about. Also you can use additional criteria to evaluate journals quality related with the purpose of your evaluation.

Snejanka

The indexes you mention only increas the probability that the journal quality is as the index suggests and that the articles published have the corresponding quality. Not more. There is no garantee that any particular article, for example some my article, that will be published in one of the journals with the high IF, is itself of high quality.

This is correct. But I think we're talking about evaluation of journals and not articles level metrics and evaluation.

Good journals may not charge you any, so my advice is focus on them.You can easily find top rated journals in your area from web of science.

In this case you can find my paper : Article The 100 Most Cited Scientific Papers in Construction and Dem...

But many good journals are unethical because they charge our libraries so much. Or us, apcs of $3000 or more per article. We need change.

Hi,

Even in a subscription journal that does not charge for publishing a paper, one often has to pay if he needs his figures to be in color . Besides, the non-English researchers need to edit their paper and this could cost an average of 80$ per paper. So, actually you have expenses even in publications that do not charge processing fees.

Snejanka

The question is stated above, so we know “what we are talking about”: the “real” costs of publishing a paper in a good journal. However, it is impossible to judge the „real“ scientific value of a paper! What is judged is its formal and apparent quality. Therefore the quality of a scientist is routinely judged in great part on the account of the impact factor (IF) or other parameters of a journal where the paper is published. The value of a scientist as a scientist is in great part estimated on the account of published papers. Try to get a new job and you will face those criteria. In Europe the obligatory question will be “what is the IF of the journals you published so far? I gave a rough minimal estimate of the price of publishing articles in France – from personal experience. I just do not accept “relativism”! If we push the issue to the very END, when we ask how much was invested in the publishing, we might start with the costs of education of the people working in the journal. This is ABSURD.

yes, it is right

Helpful contributions

I am a M.Sc. Final year student in Physics, how am i supposed to pay that much amount of money for a publishing a paper in JOSA-B . (I don't have a award funding or so) .. please enlighten me on this.

APC has discouraged me from submitting articles in many of the journals.

Yes, some journals ask huge amount for publication, but researchers not funded for their research find it very difficult. Try to publish in free journals.

I have answered this question sometime back. However, I would like to add one thing and that is the cost is: your effort to make a nice presentation which would be accepted by the scientific community. Do not say that the reviewers on the otherside would not imagine what I feel as missing or they are too ignorant to comprehend my language. These are very wrong assumptions. Even if some reviewer do overlook some of these, remember that your readers are going to pull you up for any misconceptions that you thought would not be seen.

I have what I consider to be a very good publication record in my field and I never pay publication fees. The top scholarly journals in my field do not ask for fees for the basic publication.

I am not convinced that Open Acces fees boost the prominence of a paper. Making sure that once published, a paper appears in ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and other "free" sites like academia.edu, Semantic Scholar, Mendeley, etc., makes the papers widely accessible.

Check the rules of each journal to see whether "pre-press" versions may be posted with full text. If not, make sure your abstract contains sufficient specific information to make it citable.

Everyone should be aware that publishers like Elsevier are financially healthy for-profit companies that distribute dividends to their shareholders. This means that non-profit educational institutions along with academics that do not profit financially from their scholarly activity are subsidizing that profit. Further, we review, edit, and serve as board members without compensation. Something needs to change.

Well lots of discussions have taken place on this topic. Now time has come to answer this question very precisely. The cost is GOOD NOVEL RESEARCH WORK WITH FARSIGHTED APPLICATION.

The top scholarly journals do not ask for fees for the basic publication.