Article processing charge
An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making an academic work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal. This fee may be paid by the author, the author's institution, or their research funder. Sometimes, publication fees are also involved in traditional journals or for paywalled content. Some publishers waive the fee in cases of hardship or geographic location, but this is not a widespread practice. An article processing charge does not guarantee that the author retains copyright to the work, or that it will be made available under a Creative Commons license. Background Journals use a variety of ways to generate the income required to cover publishing costs (including editorial costs, any costs of administering the peer review system), such as subsidies from institutions and subscriptions. A majority of open access journals do not charge article processing charges, but a significant and growing number of them do. They are the most common funding method for professionally published open access articles. APC fees applied to academic research are usually expensive, effectively limiting the uptake of open access publishing among the less affluent institutions, scholars, and students. The APC model of open access, among other controversies, is part of the wider and increasingly global Open Access OA's ethics debate. Most journals do not charge APCs. The global average per-journal APC is , its recent increase indicating "that authors choose to publish in more expensive journals". A 2019 analysis has shown 75% of European spending on scientific journals goes to "big five" publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and the American Chemical Society (ACS)). Together they accounted for 56% of articles published. Other publishing fees Author fees or page charges have existed since at least the 1930s. Different academic publishers have widely varying levels of fees, from under $100 to over $5000, and even sometimes as high as €9500 ($) for the journal Nature. Meanwhile, an independent study indicated that the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article should be in the region of €200–€1000. High fees are sometimes charged by traditional publishers in order to publish in a hybrid open access journal, which make an individual article in a subscription journal open access. The average APC for hybrid journals has been calculated to be almost twice as high as APCs from full open access publishers. Journals with high impact factors from major publishers tend to have the highest APCs. Open access articles often have a surcharge compared to closed-access or paywalled content; for example, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences charges $1590–$4215 per article (depending on length) for closed-access, with a surcharge of $1700–$2200 for open-access (depending on licence). Similarly, AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research charges $1000 for closed-access and $3500 for open-access. Even when publishers do not charge standard fees, excess or overlength fees might still apply after