O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) doi: 10.1002/leap.1558 Received: 21 October 2022 | Accepted: 1 June 2023 | Published online in Wiley Online Library: 3 July 2023
Article processing charges for open access journal
publishing: A review
A´ngel Borrego
Departament de Biblioteconomia, Documentaci
o i
Comunicaci
o Audiovisual & Centre de Recerca en
Informaci
o, Comunicaci
o i Cultura (CRICC), Universitat
de Barcelona, Melcior de Palau, 140, Barcelona, 08014,
Spain
ORCID: 0000-0002-6462-3966
E-mail: borrego@ub.edu
Abstract: Some open access (OA) publishers charge authors fees to make
their articles freely available online. This paper reviews literature on article
processing charges (APCs) that has been published since 2000. Despite praise
for diamond OA journals, which charge no fees, most OA articles are publi-
shed by commercial publishers that charge APCs. Publishers fix APCs
depending on the reputation assigned to journals by peers. Evidence shows a
relationship between high impact metrics and higher, faster rising APCs.
Authors express reluctance about APCs, although this varies by discipline
depending on previous experience of paying publication fees and the availabil-
ity of research grants to cover them. Authors rely on a mix of research grants,
library funds and personal assets to pay the charges. Two major concerns
have been raised in relation to APCs: the inability of poorly funded authors to
publish research and their impact on journal quality. Waivers have not solved
the first issue. Research shows little extension of waiver use, unintended side
effects on co-author networks and concerns regarding criteria to qualify for
them. Bibliometric studies concur that journals that charge APCs have a simi-
lar citation impact to journals that rely on other income sources.
Keywords: article processing charges, open access, scholarly communication
INTRODUCTION
Open access (OA) has shaken up scholarly communication in the
past two decades by introducing a new publishing model based
on the idea of free, unrestricted distribution of research outputs.
There are two strategies to achieve this aim: green OA (i.e., the
deposit of scholarly outputs in repositories) and gold OA.
In the gold OA model, journal publishers make articles immedi-
ately available for free on the web. To sustain their business, pub-
lishers require authors, instead of readers, to bear the costs of
publication. Thus, gold OA journals charge article processing charges
(APCs) to authors to make their work available in OA. However, not
all OA journals charge APCs. Some journals, known as diamond or
platinum journals, are funded by other means, such as by learned
societies and university presses. Nevertheless, most commercial pub-
lishers whose income has been based on selling subscriptions have
implemented APCs. Some journals are fully OA, while others use a
hybrid OA model that combines subscription content, which is
paywalled, with OA for articles whose authors pay APCs.
This article reviews the literature on APCs published since
2000 to improve our understanding of their nature and their
implications for scholarly communication. To the best of our
knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of this phe-
nomenon since, in a review of economic aspects of the scholarly
journal system, King and Tenopir (2011) devoted some space
(pp. 340–347) to the ‘OA author pays’ model.
Learned Publishing 2023; 36: 359–378 www.learned-publishing.org © 2023 The Author.
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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License,
which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial
purposes.
359
This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of
previous research on APCs. A clear understanding of the implica-
tions, controversies and challenges of APCs is crucial for the con-
solidation of the OA publishing model. This review also provides
a starting point for researchers aiming to conduct further
research on the topic.
The text is organized around eight issues. After describing
the method employed to gather the literature, the nature of APCs
to sustain OA publishing is introduced. Afterwards, research is
summarized on the transition from journal subscriptions to OA
based on APCs. The next section gathers studies on the prevalence
of APCs, price models, fees charged and expense monitoring.
Afterwards, a section is devoted to factors that determine how
publishers set APCs. The review continues by revising the literature
on funding sources used by authors to pay APCs. The following
section covers studies on authors’ views and behaviour regarding
APCs. The final two sections deal with concerns on two questions:
the inequities introduced by APCs and their potential impact on
journal quality. All these issues are brought together in a conclusion
that describes the role of APCs in the current scholarly communi-
cation landscape.
METHOD
On 9 May 2022, we conducted a search in Scopus to retrieve
papers published since 2000 that included any of the following
three expressions in the title, abstract or keywords: ‘article
processing charges’, ‘author fees’ or ‘publication fees’. We did
not restrict the search by document type or language (Fig. 1). We
considered searching the acronym ‘APC’, but most of the
retrieved records were not relevant for our purpose.
After removing duplicates (i.e., records including two or three
of the searched keywords), 497 results remained. We screened
the articles’ titles and abstracts and selected 232 results that mat-
ched our research topic. Non-pertinent records were mostly
duplicates (i.e., two records in Scopus referring to the same docu-
ment, Fig. 2A), similar results presented in a conference paper
and a journal article (e.g., Fig. 2B), and abstracts including funding
information for the payment of APCs (e.g., Fig. 2C).
After assessing the full-text of these 232 articles, we retained
168. Articles excluded at this stage were mostly studies on schol-
arly communication that mentioned APCs in passing, editorials
announcing the introduction of APCs in a given journal, and case
studies describing the OA landscape in a country or discipline.
Based on backward and forward chaining of references and cita-
tions to these relevant documents, we added 17 articles to the
review. Finally, on 11 July 2022 and 2 March 2023, we replicated
our search and added three and six new results respectively; thus,
a total of 194 papers were reviewed.
The scope of the review is limited by the coverage of
Scopus, which has been criticized for its overrepresentation of
English language journals and its underrepresentation of journals
from the Global South (Borrego et al., 2023). This gap is impor-
tant since the issue of APCs especially affects scholars based in
countries with less access to research funds. We may also have
missed relevant research results published in the form of grey
literature, such as reports or dissertations not indexed in
Scopus.
The revised studies had been published over the course of
two decades, from 2003 to 2023, although 145 articles (75%)
had been published in the last 10 years. Six journals concentrated
one-third (32%) of the literature, each one publishing more than
five articles on the topic: Learned Publishing (15 articles),
Scientometrics (12), Insights: the UKSG Journal (11), Journal of the
Association for Information Science and Technology (11), Publica-
tions (8) and PeerJ (6). Most authors were affiliated to institutions
based in the United States (46 articles, 24%), the United Kingdom
(27, 14%), Canada (12, 6%) and Germany (12, 6%). As discussed
above, the geographical origin of authors needs to be borne in
mind when analysing the results; the issue of APCs is especially
relevant to researchers in countries and institutions with less
access to research funds, but most of the literature has been pub-
lished by authors based in wealthy nations.
THE APC MODEL TO SUSTAIN OA
PUBLISHING
The origins of OA are related to what is known as the ‘serials cri-
sis’; that is, continuous increases in journal subscription prices
above the rate of inflation and, as a consequence, the inability of
Key points
• Although diamond open access (OA) journals that charge
no fees are prevalent, most OA articles are published by
commercial publishers that charge article processing
charges (APCs).
• The relationship between impact metrics and APCs evi-
dences that publishers fix fees depending on the reputa-
tion assigned to journals by peers.
• Authors express reluctance about APCs, although this var-
ies by discipline depending on previous experience in pay-
ing publication fees and the availability of research grants
to cover them.
• As regards waivers, study suggests that their use is limited,
that they may have unintended side effects on the compo-
sition of co-author networks, and that there are concerns
regarding the criteria used to qualify for them.
• Bibliometric studies concur that journals that charge APCs
have a similar citation impact to journals that rely on other
sources of revenue.
360 A´. Borrego
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research institutions to buy access to all the scholarly content
required by their researchers. Within this context, the appearance
of the internet seemed to provide an opportunity to meet two
objectives: to displace commercial companies from the journal
publishing market and to save part of the money devoted by
research institutions to the acquisition of scholarly information
FIGURE 1 Flowchart of the litera-
ture search.
FIGURE 2 Examples of records removed: (A) two records in Scopus referring to the same document, (B) similar results published in a
journal article (top) and conference proceedings (down), (C) record including article processing charge funding information in the abstract.
361APCs review
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resources. In the words of Getz (2005, p. 2) ‘substantial cost
savings to universities are possible with open-access distribu-
tion of quality-assured journals by not-for-profit publishers
whose rates reflect cost rather than each university’s ability to
pay’. Other OA proponents did not intend to displace commer-
cial publishers and advocated that costs of publication should
be viewed as costs of research and assumed by funding agencies
(Falk, 2004; Gass, 2005).
Most OA journals in the 1990s were based on voluntary
work and used the editors’ university web servers for free, com-
bined with the allocation of government grants to support local
scientific journals (Björk, 2011; Laakso et al., 2011). It was not
until 2002 that commercial publishers entered the OA market,
relying on APCs as their income source. BioMed Central, founded
in 2000, was the first professional OA publisher (Björk, 2011). It
launched a large number of journals in the fields of biology and
medicine and introduced APCs in 2002. Initially, the standard
APC was about US $500 for accepted manuscripts, which was
adjusted ‘to a more realistic £750 in July 2005’ (Cockerill, 2006,
p. 154). The enterprise was successful enough to be acquired by
Springer in 2008.
When BioMed Central introduced APCs across its portfo-
lio of journals, numerous editorials were published to justify
this decision. The publisher stated that, since authors
obtained the reward for publication, it was logical that they
‘cover the costs of peer review and publication’ (Schnelle
et al., 2003, p. 218). In addition to underlining the benefits of
access without economic barriers, to other scientists and the
general public, the publisher gave three reasons to justify the
APC model: it was more sustainable than the traditional sub-
scription model and its price increases beyond inflation and
library budgets (Marincola, 2003; Schnelle et al., 2003);
authors retained copyright so the article could be published
freely on the web, submitted to interested readers and col-
leagues and article components could be utilized in other
publications without a request for permission (Bukovsky &
Bazer, 2003); and free online articles were cited more
because of their greater availability (Mathers & Murray, 2003;
Velterop, 2003).
In addition to these arguments, most editorials stated that,
since BioMed Central journals were not printed, they did not
levy page charges or charges for colour illustrations, which was
a common practice at the time. Print journals frequently levied
page charges for amounts similar to the newly established
APCs and both charges were sometimes conflated. Thus,
Doyle, Gass and Kennison (2004, p. 409) stated that publica-
tion fees were ‘not a phenomenon born of the open-access
movement. Many authors regularly pay several thousands of
dollars in page charges, color charges, correction costs, reprint
costs, and other fees to their publisher’. Cockerill (2006,
p. 151) described APCs as ‘not unlike the page charges levied
by many subscription journals’. AGU, a non-profit scientific
association publishing journals in earth and space science,
announced the arrival of APCs as a substitute for colour char-
ges (Cook, 2010).
Most BioMed Central editorials highlighted the concession of
waivers and discounts to referees and authors from developing
countries or low-funded institutions, so APCs would ‘only be paid
by those who can afford it’ (Bukovsky & Bazer, 2003). In addi-
tion, an automatic waiver was provided if the author’s institution
was a BioMed Central member. We will return to APC centrally
paid models and waivers below.
Besides a potential reduction in costs, some authors
predicted that the adoption of APCs would result in redistri-
bution of these costs among research institutions. The reason
was that institutional disparities in research outputs were far
greater than institutional differences in library holdings. If
research institutions assumed the costs of their members’
publications in OA journals funded with APCs, a shift from a
pricing model based on subscriptions to one based on pub-
lishing productivity would reduce the proportion of the total
cost paid by most institutions and increase the proportion of
the total cost paid by the largest research universities
(Walters, 2007; Walters & Wilder, 2007). Any potential cost
reduction would not be linear at institutional level since the
revenue model in the two systems was different. With sub-
scriptions, the reader base determined the institutional costs,
whereas with OA the number of authors was decisive
(Waaijers, 2015).
This redistribution of costs among research institutions is
usually referred to as the ‘free rider’ problem. As the share of OA
outputs increases, less research-oriented institutions are tempted
to cancel their subscriptions. The money they contributed to the
scholarly communication market through subscriptions disappears
from the system and research-intensive institutions have to cover
the difference through APCs. Nevertheless, not all authors agree
with the idea that library budgets in research-intensive institu-
tions would suffer from additional stress in the transition from
subscriptions to OA. In the United States, the ‘Pay it Forward’
project (Cook & Smith, 2017) explored costs associated with
moving scholarly journal subscriptions entirely to an APC busi-
ness model. They estimated that, if all journals shifted to gold
OA, the more research-intensive universities would pay more
than they paid for journal subscriptions. However, those institu-
tions also enjoy large research grants and many of their
researchers already pay publishing fees in the form of submission
fees, page fees, colour charges, and so on from their grants.
Therefore, library budgets would not necessarily require more
funding, since research grants could offset some costs. In
Germany, Bruns et al. (2020) compared options for sharing costs
for publication in APC journals and their financial effects at insti-
tutional level. They distinguished four sharing options depending
on whether costs were assumed by the institution of the first
author, that of the corresponding author, distributed equally
among institutions, or weighted on the number of authors from
each institution. They concluded that all models resulted in simi-
lar expenditure for the overwhelming majority of institutions,
although there were organizations where the difference between
the most and the least expensive model was a considerable
amount.
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iley Online Library on [13/03/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on W
iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
THE TRANSITION FROM JOURNAL
SUBSCRIPTIONS TO OA PUBLISHING BASED
ON APCS
A lot of the literature has investigated possible transitional
models from journal subscriptions to OA publication. From the
perspective of publishers, Laakso et al. (2016) identified various
scenarios for journals transitioning from subscription to
OA. Among the models that rely on APCs, three general conver-
sion scenarios were identified (introducing submission fees, bun-
dling APCs with subscription licences and rebranding the scope
of the journal) and two gradual conversion scenarios: hybrid OA
and delayed OA.
Hybrid journals seemed a promising model that would allow
publishers to flip their business from selling subscriptions to pub-
lishing OA. The idea was that authors would progressively pay
fees for publishing their articles OA and, as a result, publishers
would reduce subscription prices until the full journal converted
to OA. An editorial in Gerontechnology (Van Bronswijk, 2013, p. 2)
illustrates this approach. The editor ‘urge[d] authors to use our
voluntary OA publishing [€800], to pave the road to full OA’. The
publisher intended an increase of 25% in voluntary OA each year
to reach full OA in 4 years.
Björk and Solomon (2014) explored ways for funders to
cover the cost of APCs, while encouraging the development of a
competitive, transparent market. They claimed that gold and
hybrid OA markets were ‘significantly different’ (p. 101): gold OA
was a ‘relatively normal economic market’, with publishers com-
peting via a combination of quality, innovative services and price,
whereas hybrid OA was ‘dysfunctional’ with little price differenti-
ation among journals based on quality, discipline or services pro-
vided. Similarly, Besancenot and Vranceanu (2017, p. 149)
claimed that this move towards hybrid OA resulted in ‘higher rev-
enues for the MPHs [major publishing houses], a reduced burden
for libraries, and high costs for authors’. Nevertheless, the hybrid
model spread widely, with the number of journals offering this
option increasing from around 2000 in 2009 to almost 10,000 in
2016 and the number of articles growing from 8000 to 45,000
(Björk, 2017). A study using article metadata showed that the
share of Elsevier hybrid OA articles increased from 2.6% to 3.7%
between 2015 and 2019 (Jahn et al., 2022). Most hybrid OA arti-
cles were invoiced directly to authors, followed by articles
invoiced through agreements with research funders, institutions
or consortia, with only a few funding bodies driving hybrid OA
uptake.
Concerns about higher APCs in hybrid journals than in gold
journals were further exacerbated by the perception that pub-
lishers offering hybrid OA were ‘double dipping’; that is, receiving
payment to make an article OA and a second payment for the
same article in the form of a subscription for the remainder of
the journal (Kingsley, 2014). In contrast to previous statements
on the potential savings of OA, Verhagen (2013, p. 53) consid-
ered it necessary to ‘accept that OA is substantially more expen-
sive than subscriptions for HE [higher education] institutions that
contribute above average to the production of scholarly information’.
He proposed two possible solutions to avoid disruptions caused
by hybrid OA. These solutions anticipated what subsequently
have been transformative agreements: to include clauses in
journal subscription licences to provide researchers with heavily
discounted APCs or to provide free access to journals by agree-
ing to pay the full APCs for university members’ publications in
the publisher’s journals.
Concerns about higher APCs in hybrid journals and the ‘dou-
ble dipping’ issue have reached research funders, who increas-
ingly mandate OA for the results of the research they fund. In
2018, a consortium of national research agencies and funders
from 12 European countries launched Plan S, which required
researchers who benefited from grants to publish their work
OA. As a result, an increasing number of publishers and libraries
have negotiated transformative agreements, also known as ‘off-
setting’, ‘read and publish’ or ‘publish and read’ agreements
(Borrego et al., 2021). These contracts bundle subscription
licences with APCs and aim to shift the focus of scholarly journal
licensing towards OA publication. The assessment of the first
transformative agreements in the market showed that, although
they had slowed down increases in costs and could help institu-
tions in the administration and implementation of OA, they were
also ‘flawed through their implicit acceptance and strengthening
of the current costly and opaque market for journal subscriptions’
(Earney, 2017, p. 11). An analysis of a sample of 36 transformative
agreements (Borrego et al., 2021) concluded that it was hard to
assess whether these agreements were just a temporary phase in
the transition towards OA or would perpetuate the current struc-
ture of the scholarly communication system and its associated
high costs.
The shrink in journal publishing costs due to technology has
not resulted in library savings but has increased publishers’ reve-
nue due to drawbacks in the scholarly communication market to
the point that ‘judicious policy intervention in the journal market
is worthwhile’ (Armstrong, 2015, p. 1). OA has often increased
library expenditure for institutional repositories and payment of
APCs and library support for OA is often more of a ‘philosophical
stance’ (Holley, 2018), without significant cost savings. Some
authors believe that APCs funded by academic library collections’
budgets are ‘antithetical to the values of librarianship and aca-
demic libraries’ (Scott, 2018, p. 262). According to Willinsky
(2018), OA has taken two forms, either a commercial model dom-
inated by large traditional publishers pursuing APCs or non-profit
initiatives supported by research institutions. Willinsky and Rusk
(2019) argue in favour of the second, moving towards universal
OA without APCs. Similarly, Green (2019) suggests that flipping
to supply-side business models, such as APCs, will not work with
current budgets. He proposes adopting a two-step publishing
model where articles are published first as preprints, then journal
editors invite authors to submit papers that ‘succeed’ for peer
review.
Leaving aside the impact of APCs on library budgets, some
research has explored other side effects of APCs. Although there
is not much data available on how the introduction of APCs
363APCs review
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affects the number of submissions to gold OA journals, an edito-
rial by Bachelet (2019) reported that their introduction in the bio-
medical journal Medwave resulted in a 50% drop in the number of
unsolicited manuscripts between 2016 and 2018. However, an
analysis of four large gold OA publishers (Khoo, 2019) showed no
evidence that APC introduction reduced article volumes. APCs
may also have an impact on how authors create co-authorship
networks. Using Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
(MDPI) journals as a case study, Cary and Rockwell (2020) found
that researchers from low-income countries were more likely to
form international collaborations than researchers from wealthier
nations, possibly to cover the costs of APCs.
PREVALENCE OF APCS, PRICE MODELS, FEES
CHARGED AND EXPENSE MONITORING
Several studies have analysed the prevalence of OA journals that
rely on APCs as a source of revenue, their price models, the fees
they charge and the expenses of research institutions. They con-
cur that APCs are associated with large publishers (Polydoratou &
Schimmer, 2010) and that OA journals based on APCs are larger
than OA journals without author fees. In an analysis of 663 OA
journals in six subject areas, Walters and Linvill (2011b) reported
that 29% of OA journals charging APCs published 50% of the
articles, with journals in biology and medicine being larger and
more likely to charge fees. Similarly, Laakso and Björk (2012)
observed the increasingly common presence of OA journals
charging APCs. They were responsible for the publication of 49%
of all OA articles in 2011. Kozak and Hartley (2013) reported that
28% of over 9000 OA journals listed in the Directory of Open
Access Journals (DOAJ) charged authors for publishing. This fig-
ure was much higher in medicine (47%) and the sciences (43%)
than in the humanities (4%) and the arts (0%). These figures have
remained stable. Using DOAJ data from 2018, Gul et al. (2019)
reported that 27% of journals charged APCs. Rodrigues et al.
(2020) focused on 1354 journals that had received the DOAJ
Seal; that is, they had achieved a high level of openness and pub-
lishing standards (around 10% of the journals listed in DOAJ).
Within this group, 72% of journals charged APCs, most of them
(59%) less than US $1000. Crawford conducted a series of stud-
ies on gold OA journals listed in DOAJ. The overall picture in
2021 (Crawford, 2022) identified 16,620 OA journals: 68%
charged no fees, but 69% of the articles were published in
journals that did charge APCs.
Instead of DOAJ, Kim and Park (2021a, 2021b) used the
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) as a data source. They observed
that, in 2019, gold OA journals accounted for 13% of the journals
listed, while hybrid and subscription-only journals represented
67% and 20%, respectively. Gold OA journals were further
divided into 1323 journals with APCs and 317 without. About
2 million OA articles were indexed in the Web of Science
between 2014 and 2019, which accounted for 21% of all articles
(17% in gold OA journals and 4% in hybrid journals).
Regarding price models, after analysing data from 77 pub-
lishers charging APCs, Björk and Solomon (2012b) concluded that
the most frequent pricing method was a single fee for all articles
in a particular journal, with 70% of publishers using this model.
This APC either could be the same for all the journals of a given
publisher or individually determined for each journal. Fees were
only applied to accepted papers. Journals charging submission
fees were ‘rather uncommon’ (p. 134). This latter practice has
continued to be exceptional and, based on DOAJ data from
2018, Gul et al. (2019) reported that just 246 journals charged
submission fees and 125 journals charged both submission and
publication fees compared to 3256 journals that charged only
publication fees.
In terms of fees charged, most studies concur that there is a
wide price range, with hybrid journals charging higher APCs than
gold journals. Two sources are used to collect this information:
prices advertised by publishers on their websites and requests for
information from authors and institutions about the fees they
have paid. Using the first approach, Solomon and Björk (2012a)
analysed 1370 DOAJ journals that charged APCs. The average
APC was slightly over US $900 (with fees ranging between US
$8 and US $3900), a much lower figure than was generally
charged by subscription publishers for providing individual arti-
cles OA in hybrid journals. Professionally published journals had
substantially higher APCs than journals published by societies,
universities or scholars/researchers.
A longitudinal series of studies estimating APCs was con-
ducted by Morrison and colleagues. An initial study (Morrison
et al., 2015) observed that 26% of the journals listed in DOAJ in
May 2014 charged APCs. Their analysis described a ‘complex’,
‘volatile’ landscape with a wide range of publication costs, varia-
tion in pricing (including waivers and discounts for authors based
in low-income countries), different prices depending on article
type, institutional or society memberships, optional charges for
extra services such as language editing or fast track, and so
on. Afterwards, Morrison et al. (2016) published an updated
dataset with data collected in 2015. More recently, she reported
that the global average APC showed little change over time: US
$906 in 2010, US $964 in 2016 and US $974 in 2017
(Morrison, 2020). However, this average masked currency differ-
ences and the impact of a growing market, with new OA journals
often starting with an APC of 0. A further study (Morrison
et al., 2022) examined trends in APCs from 2011 to 2021 and
concluded that most journals still do not charge them. The aver-
age APC per journal increased slightly, but the average per article
increased from US $904 to US $1626, indicating that authors
chose to publish in more expensive journals. Crawford (2022)
reported that the average cost per article in DOAJ journals,
including journals that charge no fees, was US $1374 (US $1997,
considering only APC-based journals).
Solomon and Björk (2016) triangulated APC data on publica-
tions by authors based at four research-intensive universities in
the United States and Canada with APC payment records from
several European universities and funding agencies. They found
that the gold APC average was slightly under US $2000 while the
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nloaded from
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/doi/10.1002/leap.1558 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), W
iley Online Library on [13/03/2025]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on W
iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
hybrid APC average was about US $3000. The study illustrates
how, in addition to gathering price data from publishers’ websites,
another source of information on publication fees is self-reported
data on APC payments. The OpenAPC initiative (openapc.net)
gathers datasets on fees paid for OA publication. The data are
provided voluntarily by research institutions and funders. Using
this source, Jahn and Tullney (2016) estimated an average APC in
Germany between 2005 and 2015 of €1298. Most articles publi-
shed in gold OA journals charged lower fees than hybrid journals.
In contrast, articles in hybrid journals accounted for the largest
share of spending in Austria and the United Kingdom, according
to the same source. Pieper and Broschinski (2018) provided addi-
tional insight into OpenAPC’s technical and organizational back-
ground and illustrated how transparent, reproducible reporting on
APC expenditure can be conducted across institutions and pub-
lishers. Nevertheless, Bruns and Taubert (2021) showed that, for
German universities contributing to this monitoring system, more
than half of APC payments were not covered. The average pay-
ments for non-covered APCs were higher than for covered APCs,
and the group of universities that did not contribute to OpenAPC
accounted for two thirds of APC-liable publications in the
country.
Some studies have aimed to calculate APC expenditure at
country, funder, disciplinary or publisher level. In India, Madhan
et al. (2017) estimated that, between 2010 and 2014, researchers
spent around US $2.4 million annually on APCs to publish about
15,400 papers in gold OA journals (i.e., excluding hybrid OA),
with prices ranging from US $7.5 to US $5000. White et al.
(2021) studied journal articles published by researchers at all
eight New Zealand universities in 2017. They estimated an aver-
age cost of US $1682 for gold OA articles and US $2558 for
hybrid OA articles, to reach a total estimated cost of US
$1.45 million. In Chile, Krauskopf (2021) estimated expenditure
above US $9 million for 2019 publications that included at least
one Chilean affiliation, with over 52% of the APCs collected by
five commercial publishers.
At funder level, Bakker et al. (2017) analysed the OA publish-
ing costs of articles funded by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of
Canada between 2009 and 2014. Their results evidenced signifi-
cantly lower APCs in gold (US $1900) than in hybrid (US $3000)
journals. At disciplinary level, Peñaranda-Ortega et al. (2021)
calculated the cost of OA publication of all the articles in JCR
journals in the top two quartiles in psychology between 2017
and 2018. They estimated an average APC of €2321 and a total
cost of around €68 million per year. Another study that focused
on the cost of OA articles published via APCs by Spanish authors
in five areas of the social sciences between 2012 and 2019
(Ferrer-Sapena et al., 2021) estimated an average APC of €1129
with a total cost of €481,120. Smith et al. (2017) calculated that
the amount paid in APCs for global health research published
between 2010 and 2014 was US $1.7 million for 627 papers,
with authors paying on average US $2732 per publication and
94% of APCs charged by the 10 most prominent publishers. Con-
curring with the latter result, Kim and Park (2020) reported an
estimated average APC for the top 10 publishers in the JCR of
US $2652. For all 10 publishers, except Elsevier and the Royal
Society of Chemistry, the average APC per article was higher
than the average journal subscription price. Finally, Butler et al.
(2022) estimated that authors paid the five largest commercial
publishers $1.06 billion in gold and hybrid publication fees
between 2015 and 2018.
Going one step further, a series of studies in the
United Kingdom aimed to provide a picture of the total cost of
publication (i.e., subscriptions plus APCs and administration costs)
incurred by academic institutions. Initial results showed a rapid
rise in APC payments between 2007 and 2014, although with
considerable variation across institutions and publishers. The
average APC over the period was £1682 and the top 10 pub-
lishers received 76% of the payments made. On average, APCs
accounted for 10% and subscriptions for 90% of the total cost of
publication, excluding administration costs (Pinfield et al., 2016).
Another study (Johnson et al., 2016) reported that the cost to
make an article OA using the gold route was over 2.5 times
higher than the green route (i.e., depositing in a repository) and
that the costs of complying with research funders’ OA policies
were considerably higher if publication was left entirely to the
authors’ discretion. Subsequently, using data from 2012 to 2014,
Pinfield et al. (2017) showed that APCs constituted 12% of the
total cost of publication, APC administration 1%, and subscrip-
tions 87%. The average APC in 2014 was £1586, with hybrid
options considerably more expensive than gold OA.
From a methodological point of view, Gray (2015) argued
that research to calculate the total cost of publication neglected
other publication charges, predominantly page and colour char-
ges. When these charges were considered, the total cost to
British institutions as of 2013–2014 was around 18.5% above
the cost of journal subscriptions: 11% from APCs, 5.5% from indi-
rect costs and 2% from other publication charges. In Spain,
Baquero-Arribas et al. (2019) estimated APCs paid by the Spanish
National Research Council (CSIC) between 2008 and 2018. CSIC
authors had published their OA articles in gold and hybrid
journals alike, although with an increasing slight predominance of
the latter option. The sum devoted to APCs (€2.6 million) and the
annual cost of subscriptions (€6.4 million) reached a total budget
invested in scientific journals above €9 million.
The APC publishing model has been associated with the
potential for more transparency and competition, leading to a
more efficient market and cost reductions. However, research
shows that this has not been the case. Hagenhoff et al. (2008)
estimated the fees needed for journals to be sustainable based
on the assumption that all serials changed their business model
to author pays. They concluded (p. 257) that ‘the amount of
money currently available in the system of scholarly communica-
tion is probably not sufficient for the sustainable financing of
publishing fees’. This assertion heavily contrasts with the conclu-
sion of a subsequent report by the Max Planck Society
(Schimmer et al., 2015) that stated exactly the opposite: ‘all the
indications are that the money already invested in the research
publishing system is sufficient to enable a transformation that will
be sustainable for the future. There needs to be a shared
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iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
understanding that the money currently locked in the journal sub-
scription system must be withdrawn and repurposed for open
access publishing services’ (p. 1). These discrepancies possibly
stem from the different perspectives adopted: that of the
resources devoted by libraries or that of the profits expected by
publishers. When Copiello (2020) analysed the transition towards
a fully OA publishing landscape from the perspective of a big
commercial publisher (Elsevier), he concluded that, to preserve
the publisher’s profit margin, average APCs would need be
around twice (US $4173–US $4482) the current APC
(US $2544).
DETERMINANTS OF APCS
Another relevant question is how publishers set APCs. As dis-
cussed above, OA was initially envisioned as an opportunity to
restrain licence subscription prices. However, it soon became evi-
dent that the ‘author-pay model is not without its own pricing’
(West et al., 2014, p. 1315) and APCs are subject to price
increases similar to or higher than those of serial subscriptions.
Khoo (2019) showed that, for four large gold OA publishers
(BMC formerly BioMed Central, Frontiers, Hindawi and MDPI),
APC increases proceeded at a rate three times faster than infla-
tion. Zhang et al. (2022) estimated that revenues from APCs
among major publishers exceed US $2 billion annually, with
expenses sharply increasing across a sample of six countries inde-
pendently of their OA performance and policies.
The reasons behind APC increases are similar to those that
explain serial subscription rises. Publishers set prices for subscrip-
tions and APCs that do not correspond to the cost of publication,
but to the reputation of their journals and the libraries and
authors’ ability to pay. Eve (2015) argued that the APC model is
based on two key flawed assumptions. The first is that a market
will emerge in which researchers will develop price sensitivity in
the selection of their publication venues. However, in markets
that deal with symbolic capital, such as prestige or reputation,
perceived value has little to do with the services or goods pro-
vided, but instead is wholly concerned with how the brand is val-
ued by peers. The second flawed assumption is that APCs are
simply a straightforward substitution of the point of payment to
the supply side of the economic system.
The correlation between APCs and prestige was identified by
Walters and Linvill (2011a), who observed that journals that
charged higher publication fees were especially likely to have
higher impact factors. Later, Solomon and Björk (2012a) analysed
1370 journals listed in DOAJ that charged APCs. They observed
that the lowest prices were charged by journals published in
developing countries whereas the highest were charged by
journals with high impact factors from major international pub-
lishers. In a subsequent study using bibliometric information pro-
vided by Scopus (Björk & Solomon, 2015, p. 381), they insisted
on the relationship between citation rates and APCs and hypoth-
esized that ‘authors choose OA journals that offer better value in
terms of impact for the APC paid’.
It is hard to find transparent information on publishers’ costs
and how these costs are transferred to APCs. Graziotin et al.
(2014) analysed 30 OA journals in software engineering and
information systems and concluded that high APCs were not suf-
ficiently justified by publishers. Among the scarce examples of
transparency, an editorial of the Journal of Applied Medical Physics
(Mills, 2016) detailed the cost of the editorial platform, perpetu-
ity, copyeditor, and so on to justify the introduction of a US $500
APC, which is much lower than the charges of other journals in
the same field.
There is further evidence of the relationship between APCs
and prestige. Ennas and Di Guardo (2015) analysed a sample of
1910 gold OA journals and observed that, although 62% of
journals did not require a publication fee, 61% of top-ranked
journals required one. Using a sample of 174 OA non-human bio-
logical science journals, Gray (2020) showed that bibliometric
values increased as APCs increased, and these metrics were
higher for publishers from high-income countries. Taking MDPI
as a case study, Okagbue et al. (2020) reported that the charges
levied by journals that had an impact factor and CiteScore were
significantly higher than those charged by journals with neither
an impact factor nor CiteScore. Similarly, using OpenAPC data
from the United Kingdom, Schönfelder (2020) found a positive
relationship between the citation impact and APCs for gold and
hybrid journals. Using DOAJ data, Siler and Frenken (2020)
observed that journals published by large for-profit publishers
with ‘status endowments’ (i.e., impact factor, DOAJ Seal) and those
published in English, in wealthier regions, and in medical or
science-based disciplines were more expensive. Budzinski et al.
(2020) corroborated that journal reputation, the market power of
publishers, the hybrid model and the concentration of disciplines
increased APCs. Specifically, their results disclosed a 50% sur-
charge on hybrid OA publishing. Very similar results were reported
by Maddi and Sapinho (2022), who showed that APCs for hybrid
journals were on average 50% higher than for gold journals.
Some studies report disciplinary exceptions to this general
trend. Demeter and Istratii (2020) showed a positive relationship
between APCs and impact factors for journals in area studies and
anthropology, but not in computer science. The reason could be
that, in computer science, a significant number of journals are
published by resourceful international associations. A study by
Jamorabo et al. (2021) of a sample of gastroenterology journals
found no association between APCs and higher impact (or faster
processing times).
Asai conducted a series of studies on this topic by analysing
the pricing models of a sample of gold OA publishers. First, he
observed that BMC set higher APCs for more frequently cited
journals and lower charges for recently launched journals
(Asai, 2019, 2020a). A subsequent study (Asai, 2020b) confirmed
that OA publishers set higher APCs for more frequently cited
journals with more articles. These results suggest that publishers
considered factors other than costs when they revised APCs.
However, while this was true for BMC, it was not for Hindawi,
which did not consider citation scores as a factor in revising char-
ges (Asai, 2021a).
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iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Finally, Ellingson et al. (2021) showed the relationship
between prestige and APCs using a different approach. They esti-
mated the financial costs paid by individual medical researchers
in 2019 for meeting the APCs levied by OA journals. They com-
pared a sample of ‘general researchers’ (with a median annual
expense of US $191) to a sample of ‘high impact researchers’
(with a median annual expense of US $2900).
FUNDING SOURCES TO PAY APCS
Multiple studies have aimed to determine the sources authors
draw on to pay the APCs for their publications. In most cases,
researchers have been surveyed to gather information about how
frequently they use grant funding or personal funds to pay APCs.
In addition, libraries have established agreements with publishers
to obtain discounts and facilitate the administration of payments.
Some funders manage the payments of APCs for the research
they fund.
One of the first studies on this issue (Swan & Brown, 2004)
observed that 36% of a sample of authors who had published OA
had paid a fee that was covered by their research grant or institu-
tion. An additional 19% had the fee waived by the publisher, a
figure that may seem very high at present but made sense at an
early stage when publishers were introducing APCs. Solomon and
Björk (2012b) surveyed a larger sample of 1038 authors who had
published in OA journals that charged APCs. Their results showed
large differences in the source of funding among disciplines. As
discussed above, journals with impact factors charged higher
APCs, as did journals in disciplines where grant funding was plen-
tiful (i.e., bio and physical sciences). In contrast, authors in the
social sciences and humanities and those from lower income
countries resorted to personal funds much more frequently. In a
subsequent study, Solomon (2014) surveyed authors who had
published in four OA megajournals and found significant differ-
ences among them. About half of authors of PLOS ONE, a third of
BMJ Open and PeerJ and 10% of SAGE Open had used grant
funding to pay APCs. Meanwhile, around 60% of SAGE Open and
32% of PeerJ authors self-funded their publication fees.
Wang et al. (2015) used a different approach to deal with the
same issue by comparing OA articles in health sciences published
in journals with and without APCs (i.e., diamond journals). The
share of grant-funded articles increased as the APCs increased.
Using a small sample, Cantrell and Swanson (2020) explored the
range of funding sources available to and used by 22 authors in
arts, humanities and social sciences based at three US universi-
ties. Although the authors expected that researchers in these dis-
ciplines would have limited access to sponsored research funding,
the results showed that funding was available and used to pay
APCs. Similarly, Halevi and Walsh (2021) surveyed authors at a
US school of medicine and found that about half of them antici-
pated APCs costs in grant applications, whereas 16% paid APCs
using personal funds.
As the APC publishing model became popular, research insti-
tutions took action to facilitate OA publishing to their members
and to deal with the administrative burden of managing
payments. They reached agreements with publishers and pro-
vided funds to their members to allow them to publish in the OA
venues of their choice. Since BioMed Central was the first pub-
lisher to exploit the APC model at large, it was also the first pub-
lisher to introduce membership programmes. It introduced two
models (Cockerill, 2006) that allowed institutions to prepay future
APCs for their members, which were debited at a discounted
rate, or to pay a fixed price in return for which their members
received a discount. By 2006, the APC was covered by institu-
tional membership for 69% of articles published by BioMed
Central where an APC was payable.
Academic and research libraries set up OA central funds to
facilitate OA publication to their members. One of the earliest
examples was the Nottingham Central Fund (Cockerill, 2009),
established in response to OA mandates from research funders,
although it enabled all authors to apply for funds to publish in
OA journals. A central fund made it easier to manage and monitor
payments for the institution. Other examples of APC central
funds were those at the University of Glasgow (Ashworth
et al., 2014; Nixon et al., 2013), University College London (Ayris
et al., 2014; Sharp, 2014), Royal Holloway University of London
(Pontika & Rozenberga, 2015), the Max Planck Society (Sikora &
Geschuhn, 2015) and Brunel University London (Walters, 2016).
Although individual case studies on these programmes are
numerous, the model did not reach all academic libraries. A study
by Pinfield and Middleton (2012) reported that, by 2011, only
13% of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom had
an institutionally co-ordinated approach to pay APCs. The rea-
sons for this lack of enthusiasm were diverse. For example, with
institutional repositories in place, some institutions might have
felt that they had fulfilled their obligations by providing a mecha-
nism to support green OA. Demand from authors for support to
pay APCs was still limited. Furthermore, a widely held belief among
authors was that OA publication was less prestigious. In the
United States, Monson et al. (2014) conducted a qualitative study
of small and medium-sized academic libraries and observed that
faculty publication funds were still a new concept in scholarly com-
munication. In a subsequent study, Pinfield and Middleton (2016)
analysed the adoption of an institutional central fund at the
University of Nottingham using Innovation Diffusion Theory as an
explanatory framework. They found that increasing awareness and
changing perceptions of OA, communication, disciplinary differ-
ences and mandates were among the key factors in adoption.
Gillies (2014) described two approaches to negotiate hybrid
publishing through library consortia: the ‘market determinative
approach’, a scholar community initiative that imposes pricing for
targeted journals on behalf of the end user community, and the
‘consortium discount approach’ where library consortia negotiate
with commercial publishers. Horava and Ward (2016) surveyed
international library consortia’s approach towards APCs. The
results described a new, volatile environment, where libraries
took a cautious approach to balance their wish to support OA
and lower the barriers to free dissemination of knowledge and
research.
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iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
New library initiatives have arisen in recent years to support
centralized APC payments. Reinsfelder and Pike (2018) described
a publishing scheme based on a crowdfunding model for libraries
and institutions to help local authors pay APCs. The model
allowed libraries to share the cost of OA, often at a fraction of
the cost of APCs. Other library programmes to fund APCs are
targeted to support certain OA venues. The ‘Fund for Fair Open
Access’, set up by KU Leuven Libraries in 2018 (Verbeke &
Mesotten, 2022), was devoted to stimulating the development of
non-profit and community-led initiatives, such as supporting dia-
mond journals and subsidizing OA books published by Leuven
University Press.
While most of the literature describes library initiatives to
help authors pay APCs, Doney and Kenyon (2022) presented the
results of a study to assess one of these programmes. They sur-
veyed researchers who had received funding from, or showed
interest in, an OA subvention fund at the University of Idaho.
Participants expressed their support for the programme but also
indicated an interest in establishing a more equitable fund distri-
bution cycle and allowing researchers to seek pre-approval once
their article had been accepted for peer review.
Finally, research funders have developed programmes to pay
APCs for the results of the research they fund. Not many studies
take the view of research funders and the burdens that the APC
model imposes on them. Nevertheless, when surveyed about OA
publishing based on APCs, medical research charities showed
their concerns about the financial costs it imposes on them
(Pinfield, 2013). Similarly, in a letter to Nature, Wood et al. (2021)
stated that APC ‘presents a financial threat to environmental
non-governmental organizations’. De Castro (2016) and De
Castro and Franck (2019) described a funder programme for APCs.
In the first half of 2015, the European Commission launched a
funding initiative to cover the APCs of publications arising from
Seventh Framework Programme projects. This pilot programme
also aimed to implement an alternative funding mechanism by
which funding would also be offered to APC-free OA journals.
AUTHORS’ VIEWS AND BEHAVIOUR
REGARDING APCS
The success or failure of OA in general and the APC model in
particular is intrinsically associated with its acceptance or rebuttal
by authors. Therefore, numerous studies have aimed to collect
information on authors’ views and behaviour regarding APCs
using quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Most authors’ studies share two main findings: a relatively
high level of rejection of APCs in the early stages that has only
partially disappeared as the model has consolidated and signifi-
cant disciplinary differences related to the availability of research
funds to pay author fees. A major international survey conducted
shortly after the introduction of the model (Nicholas &
Rowlands, 2005, p. 181) found that ‘half [the authors] said they
were not prepared to pay anything [to have their work
published]’. Similarly, only 17% of a sample of surveyed authors
who had published in OA education journals had paid APCs and
over 56% indicated they would not publish in journals requiring
such fees (Coonin & Younce, 2010). Focusing on mathematicians,
Fowler (2011) observed ‘substantial philosophical opposition to
OA journal models that charge author fees’. Warlick and Vaughan
(2007), who interviewed biomedical faculty members identified
as early adopters of OA at two major American research universi-
ties, provided the only major disagreement. Their results showed
that, for researchers in biomedicine, APCs were not a major bar-
rier or disincentive. This may be because in this field author fees
were not limited to OA publishing venues and included page and
colour charges.
Most studies conclude that OA is a relevant factor when
authors choose a publishing venue, but less important than other
variables. In their survey of authors who had published in OA
journals that charged APCs, Solomon and Björk (2012b) found
that, although significant, OA was a less important factor than
the fit of the manuscript within the subject area of the journal,
scientific quality of the journal and speed of review and publica-
tion. Cusker and Rauh (2014) surveyed the physical sciences,
engineering and mathematics faculty at two American research
universities. The results indicated that most respondents had not
decided against publishing in an OA journal due to APCs.
Responses combined cautious optimism about OA journals with
scepticism about their quality, and intense opposition to the idea
of having to pay any additional costs from their own pockets.
Similarly, Sandesh and Wahrekar (2017) surveyed faculty staff
from three medical and five dental institutions in India and
reported that publication fees were among the main criteria to
consider in journal selection, but behind journal indexing, online
submission, impact factor and the peer-review process. Nelson
and Eggett (2017) focused on author motivations to publish in
chemistry hybrid OA journals. Their results showed that authors
primarily chose OA because of funding mandates. However, most
considered the money well spent because OA increased informa-
tion access to the scientific community and the general public,
and potentially increased citations. Drawing on group discussions
and interviews in the field of biomedical and health informatics,
Greussing et al. (2020) observed that APCs and quality issues
were perceived as the main obstacles for OA publishing.
The geographical factor is relevant in this kind of studies,
since the economics of the region where scholars are based has
an impact on the availability of research funds and, consequently,
on their ability to pay APCs. In Africa, Olusegun et al. (2015) sur-
veyed Nigerian medical academicians about how they choose
their article venues. Indexing was the most important determi-
nant of journal choice, but most respondents were unwilling to
pay more than US $300 as an APC. Similarly, Adjei and Owusu-
Ansah (2016) explored the factors responsible for publication
preferences among a group of researchers attending a research
writing workshop in Ghana. Although the major factor influencing
journal selection was its reputation, most researchers indicated a
high preference for journals that did not charge APCs. Van
Hoving and Brysiewicz (2017) surveyed members of the African
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Federation of Emergency Medicine and found that 24% were not
willing to publish in OA journals that requested APCs, while 39%
would only consider OA journals if the fees were sponsored. In
Pakistan, Sheikh (2019) revealed that faculty members used OA
venues more frequently to access scholarly content rather than
to publish their own research works. Lack of awareness of pub-
lishing in OA venues and publication fees were the key challenges
faced by authors. In a survey of science and technology
researchers in India, high APCs were cited as the most significant
barriers to OA publishing (Nazim & Ashar, 2022).
In France, Schöpfel et al. (2016) revealed a gap between gen-
erally positive opinions about OA and less support towards pay-
ing APCs. Only 30% of surveyed scientists at the French National
Research Centre (CNRS) declared that they had paid APCs, and
less than 20% of the others intended to do so in the future. A
subsequent study (Boukacem-Zeghmouri et al., 2018) confirmed
that OA publishing was not the norm among French researchers,
and that more than half of those who published in gold APC
journals were members of editorial teams. Tenopir et al. (2017)
surveyed academics at four major US research universities. The
prevailing attitude towards APCs was ambivalence, with willing-
ness to pay depending on the availability of funding. A survey of
Spanish researchers (Ruiz-Pérez & Delgado L
opez-C
ozar, 2017)
reported that nearly 70% had published at least one OA article in
the previous 5 years. Half of these authors covered APCs with
research funds. A subsequent study among a sample of philoso-
phers (Feenstra & Delgado L
opez-C
ozar, 2022) concluded that
they were reluctant to pay APCs since author fees raised doubts
and suspicions about the potentially distorting effects on two
issues reviewed below: equality of opportunity for authors and
the integrity and quality of manuscript evaluation systems.
Finally, some studies focused on specific types of authors:
academic librarians (Baro & Eze, 2017; Bosah et al., 2017;
Neville & Crampsie, 2019), doctoral students (Prasojo
et al., 2019; Purwanto et al., 2020) or early career researchers
(O’Hanlon et al., 2020). These studies concur that the lack of
funding for APCs is one of the main barriers to OA publication.
INEQUITIES INTRODUCED BY APCS
The literature evidences that OA publishing based on APCs suf-
fers from three potential problems. The first, frequently referred
to as the ‘free rider’ problem, has already been discussed. It
relates to charges introduced by the OA publishing model that
push institutions that produce the most scientific research to pay
a larger share of the costs of the scholarly communication
system.
The other two threats are related to the ‘publish or perish’
atmosphere in scientific research. First, there is a need to cover
APCs for many authors. This is challenging in countries and insti-
tutions with few resources, given that the APCs increase above
the rate of inflation. This evokes the ‘serials crisis’ in journal sub-
scriptions. Second, some authors argue that APCs may introduce
a conflict of interests. This affects scholarly journals that may be
tempted to reduce the rigour of peer review to accept more arti-
cles and increase revenue. In the worst-case scenario, predatory
journals who spot an opportunity for profit may abuse authors. In
this section, we will discuss the inability of some authors to pay
the fees charged by journals. In the next section, we will review
literature on concerns regarding the potential impact of APCs on
journal quality.
Beasley (2016) criticized APCs because they represent a sub-
stantial economic barrier to the authors, institutions, funding
agencies and governments that OA advocates wish to serve.
Similarly, Alizon (2018) claimed that expensive APCs threatened
less-funded departments and article quality. In the words of
Green (2019, p. 14), ‘replacing big subscription deals with big
APC deals simply flips inequity in accessing content with inequity
in publishing content’. Concerns regarding the inequity intro-
duced by APCs have been frequently raised in opinion pieces. In
a letter to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Sharma
and Sharma (2010) expressed their disagreement with this model
and their belief that authors from the developing world would
not be willing to publish in journals with APCs. They noted that,
in health sciences, APCs put more stress on junior students and
residents at the beginning of their careers who are in need of
these publications to further their chances of an academic posi-
tion. They suggested that journals charging APCs should request
a statement disclosing where the funding has come from. In
another letter to Nature, Kapovich (2012) expressed similar con-
cerns: ‘Making authors pay to publish their research endangers
the open and egalitarian nature of the scientific enterprise.
Researchers in developing countries, unaffiliated researchers,
graduate students and faculty members without large federal
grants could all be priced out of publishing their work’. In the
words of Shah and Gul (2013, p. 224), APCs have ‘created a
scholarly gap between those scholars who get the financial sup-
port and those who are either deprived of the financial support
or get a very small amount that cannot meet their needs’. Like-
wise, Frank, Foster and Pagliari (2023, p. 1) insist on the ineq-
uities that the APC model presents ‘for junior or unfunded
researchers, and academics from resource-poor environments, for
whom an increasing body of evidence shows clear evidence of
discrimination and injustice’. Similar problems have been
described for researchers in Africa (Chilimo et al., 2017;
Mekonnen et al., 2022; Nabyonga-Orem et al., 2020; Raju &
Pietersen, 2017), India (Jain et al., 2021) or Syria (Abdul Baki &
Alhaj Hussein, 2021). At disciplinary level, Wright (2019) states
that not all environmental science receives funding from large
institutions and a lot of work, especially in developing nations, is
undertaken on small grants from environmental non-
governmental organizations. In a recent opinion piece,
Alperin (2022, p. 233) argues that governments, funders and
institutions should stop supporting APCs and should invest funds
in shared infrastructure, tools, and services that can sustain multi-
ple journals simultaneously. Such an embrace of diamond OA
‘could lead to virtuous cycles in which journals can lower operat-
ing costs, raise their quality and elevate their place in research
assessment’.
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iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Some authors have conducted empirical research to deter-
mine to what extent these concerns about potential inequities
introduced by APCs are real. Kie
n
c (2017) surveyed authors in
countries with a gross domestic product per capita that is less or
greater than US $18,000 (‘periphery’ and ‘core’ countries,
respectively). Authors from periphery countries published their
articles more often in gold OA and paid APCs equally often as
those in core countries. Reasons were complex but it seemed
that, for authors from the periphery, OA venues published in
their own countries were the best option. Thus, about 52% of all
journals listed in DOAJ in 2015 were published in countries with
GDP per capita less than or equal to US $18,000.
In another study, Ellers et al. (2017) observed that, from
2011 to 2015, countries with developing economies had a
disproportionately greater share of articles published in the
lower-tier megajournals and thus paid APCs that cross-subsidized
publications in the top-tier journals of the same publisher.
Conversely, scientists from Western developed countries had a
disproportionately greater share of articles published in the same
top-tier journals. Using global health research as a case study,
Siler et al. (2018) observed that authors working at lower-ranked
universities were more likely to publish in paywalled journals and
less likely to choose either gold or hybrid journals involving APCs.
In turn, Olejniczak and Wilson (2020) reported that the likelihood
for a scholar to author an OA article with APCs increased with
male gender, employment at a prestigious institution, association
with a STEM discipline, greater federal research funding and
more advanced career stage. Similarly, Asai (2021b) analysed
authorship of articles in four disciplines and showed that authors
in low-income countries published more in gold OA, whereas
authors from high-income countries published more in hybrid
OA. Using Elsevier’s ‘mirror journal’ system, in which a hybrid
‘parent’ journal and its gold OA ‘mirror’ share editorial boards
and standards for acceptance, Smith et al. (2022) showed that
most OA articles were written by authors in high-income coun-
tries, whereas there were no articles in mirror journals by authors
in low-income countries. APCs proved to be a barrier to OA pub-
lication for scientists from the Global South. A further case study
of Elsevier’s 22 pairs of parent and mirror journals (Asai, 2023)
found that 72% of OA articles in 2021 were published in parent
journals with high citation scores and APCs, suggesting that
authors ‘with sufficient financial support for open access’ do
not respond to fluctuations in APCs when choosing journals.
After analysing 1.5 million articles from journals listed in DOAJ,
Klebel and Ross-Hellauer (2023) provide additional evidence on
how APCs stratify OA publishing, perpetuating the system
of cumulative advantage inherent to academia, given that
well-funded research groups are better placed to secure OA
publications in prestigious journals with high APCs. This is turn
generates citation advantages and leads to further funding
down the line.
Cole et al. (2023) identified high costs of APCs as one of the
issues undermining open research. In fact, this issue proved to be
the most controversial when they used a Delphi method to pro-
vide recommendations on how to combat open research
inequities. Ultimately, they proposed recommendations pertaining
to APC caps, increasing waiver programmes, and encouraging
researchers to publish in alternative outlets and/or to use criteria
other than prestige when selecting a journal. Some OA publishers
waive APCs for authors from low-income countries as a measure
to overcome these inequities. However, there is not much
research on the extension of this practice. Analysing data from
77 publishers, Björk and Solomon (2012b) reported that 22% pro-
vided waivers and others charged lower APCs to authors from
developing countries. A further analysis of a sample of 32 pub-
lishers that charged APCs (Lawson, 2015) showed that 69% had
an explicit fee waiver policy. Taubert et al. (2021) concluded that,
in economic terms, it was possible for a publisher such as
Springer Nature to waive APCs for 47 low-income countries.
However, an assessment of oncology journals (Gardner
et al., 2021) found that journals with hybrid OA status, higher
APCs, and those from the USA were seemingly less likely to offer
APC waivers to authors based in lower- and middle-income coun-
tries. For a sample of articles published in 2020 in four disci-
plines, Asai (2021b) reported that authors benefiting from
waivers accounted for less than 1% of the total.
As far as research results show, benefiting from a waiver
does not influence the editorial management of an article. An
analysis of articles published by BMC Research Notes
(Uddin, 2014) reported that all submissions, either from countries
with waivers or without, were treated equally in terms of time to
be accepted by the publisher, that is, no sense of priority worked
in the case of submissions from non-waiver countries.
Some authors claim that criteria to qualify for a waiver are
not necessarily fair and may have side effects. Edem et al. (2021)
reviewed the conditions for APC waivers or discounts in 13 major
global health journals and concluded that their policies had impli-
cations for co-authorship since, for instance, articles with an
author from a high-income country did not qualify for any form
of APC waiver or discount. Similarly, Jain et al. (2021) claimed
that India does not come under the waiver category for most of
the journals that ask for APCs.
THE IMPACT OF APCS ON JOURNAL
QUALITY
In addition to the inequities introduced by APCs, some authors
are concerned that author fees may introduce a conflict of inter-
ests that leads journals to lessen the rigour of peer review to
accept more submissions and increase revenue. These concerns
are as old as the APC model itself. In 2004, the Science and
Technology Committee of the House of Commons in the
United Kingdom required universities to ensure that their schol-
arly papers were freely available online. When OA journals
funded by APCs were discussed, the report noted ‘concern that
the author-pays publishing model would compromise the integ-
rity of peer review’ in a situation where journal revenues
depended on the number of articles published, rather than the
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iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
number of readers who subscribed (House of Commons, Science
and Technology Committee, 2004, p. 80).
Jeon and Rochet (2010) were among the first to study this
problem from a theoretical point of view. They built a model of a
journal to meet a double role of certification and dissemination of
knowledge and showed that, for the journal to maximize social
welfare, OA was optimal because the marginal cost of providing
access to a reader was zero. However, the move from a subscrip-
tion model to an APC model also affected the journal’s quality
standard for a not-for-profit journal and a for-profit journal. Traag
and Waltman (2019) disagreed with this view and claimed that
journals continue to have an incentive to maintain a certain qual-
ity to attract more submissions.
Empirical studies to explore the real extent of this potential
laxity in peer review have employed two alternative methods.
The most usual approach is to compare the citation impact of
journals that charge APCs either with subscription journals or
with OA journals without APCs. Frequently, these studies aim to
determine whether OA journals are more cited than subscription
journals, to show an ‘open access citation advantage’ resulting
from their higher visibility. The second approach consists of sub-
mitting fake manuscripts to journals that charge APCs to observe
whether these submissions are filtered through the peer review
process.
Using the first approach, Björk and Solomon (2012a) com-
pared the impact of OA and subscription journals framed in ‘an
ongoing debate as to whether the proliferation of open access
(OA) publishing would damage the peer review system and put
the quality of scientific journal publishing at risk’. After control-
ling for discipline (medicine and health vs. others), age of the jour-
nal and location of the publisher (the four largest publishing
countries vs. other countries), the results showed that OA
journals funded with APCs were more cited than other OA
journals. In another study, Solomon et al. (2013) observed that
2-year citation averages for journals funded with APCs had
reached the same level as subscription journals. Citation averages
of OA journals funded by other means continued to lag well
behind OA journals funded by APCs and subscription journals.
The authors hypothesized that this was less a quality issue than
due to the fact that such journals were commonly published in
languages other than English and tended to be located outside
the four major publishing countries.
Sotudeh and colleagues conducted a series of studies on the
topic comparing OA routes. Sotudeh et al. (2015) explored the
supposed citation advantage of the author pay model, using data
from Elsevier and Springer (i.e., including gold and hybrid journals)
between 2007 and 2011. They reported a citation advantage of
OA journals that could be attributed to their higher visibility but
that might also have roots in the selectivity of the authors in
choosing the author pay outlet to publish their high-quality
papers. A subsequent study (Sotudeh & Estakhr, 2018) confirmed
the citation advantage of Elsevier hybrid OA journals for the
2012–2015. A third study (Sotudeh et al., 2019) reported that
the combination of hybrid and green resulted in an intensified
OA citation advantage. Finally, Estakhr et al. (2021) confirmed
the citation advantage at country level of hybrid OA articles pub-
lished by Elsevier.
Zhang and Watson (2017) studied how researchers funded
by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research complied their OA
policy. They observed that hybrid journals had a higher citation
rate than OA journals with APCs. On the other side, diamond OA
journals had a much lower citation rate than the other two cate-
gories. Similarly, Abbasi et al. (2019) reported that Library and
Information Science hybrid journals received more citations than
gold OA and subscription journals. In contrast, Pollock and
Michael (2019) claimed that gold OA journals attained higher
impact factors at faster rates than subscription and hybrid
journals.
Ghane et al. (2020) compared the citation performance of
OA journals that do and do not levy APCs. They found that, over-
all, APC and non-APC OA journals had equal impact, although
with disciplinary differences. Amjad et al. (2022) confirmed the
citation advantage of OA articles published in APC journals publi-
shed by Elsevier and Springer in four domains of computer
science.
Some research suggests that the correlation between APCs
and impact at journal level does not necessarily extend to article
level. Looking at the impact of a sample of 83,752 papers, Maddi
and Sapinho (2022) found that, ‘contrary to common belief’, pay-
ing high APCs did not necessarily increase the impact of
publications.
Leaving aside bibliometric studies, other authors have used
fake manuscripts to empirically assess the thoroughness of the
peer review process in OA journals that charge APCs. Bohannon
(2013) submitted a fake scientific article to a large number of fee-
charging OA journals and revealed that less than 40% lived up to
their promise of rigorously peer reviewing what is published.
Dell’Anno et al. (2020) aimed to ‘unmask’ the inadequacy of the
review process of a sample of fee-charging journals in economics.
They submitted a ‘bait-manuscript’ to 73 economic journals to
test whether there was a difference in the peer-review process
between a treatment group (34 APC-charging journals) and a
control group (39 traditional journals that did not require APCs).
About half of the APC journals accepted the manuscript and the
authors concluded that the ‘traditional’ model ‘has a more effec-
tive incentive-mechanism to select based on quality standards’.
OA megajournals that apply a peer review policy based solely
on scientific soundness have also been under scrutiny. Some
authors are sceptical and believe megajournals are a publication
outlet for lower quality papers that would not pass the stricter
peer-review criteria applied by more selective traditional journals
(Domnina, 2016; Spezi et al., 2017; Teixeira da Silva et al., 2019).
Some studies have investigated whether this ‘soundness-only’
quality control may be linked to a higher rate of published errors.
Erfanmanesh and Teixeira da Silva (2019) found wide variation in
published errata and retractions across 16 megajournals between
2012 and 2018. An analysis of publishing behaviour and citation
rates of prolific Spanish authors (Borrego, 2021) suggested that
they do not submit to megajournals for the purpose of gaining
easier publication in a high-impact journal.
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iley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
In the worst-case scenario, some journals may simply obviate
any kind of peer review and accept any manuscript to charge
APCs. These journals are known as ‘predatory’, a term coined by
Beall (2012). Similarly, journal hijacking consists in creating a fake
website by mimicking an authentic journal portal, thereby
defrauding scholars for a publication fee. The topic of predatory
and hijacked journals goes far beyond the purpose of this review
and merits a review on its own.
CONCLUSIONS
The economies of scale of OA digital publishing seemed to bring
an opportunity to deter the continuous increases in serial sub-
scription prices. Going one step further, some authors envisioned
OA as an opportunity to shake up the scholarly communication
market and displace commercial publishers. Their role would be
assumed by non-profit societies and universities that would fund
OA journals that charge authors, if necessary, with relatively small
fees to cover the real costs of publication. This line of work has
proved partially successful, and diamond journals and those
charging low APCs are prevalent in DOAJ. However, most OA
articles are published in journals owned by large commercial pub-
lishers that charge APCs. Nevertheless, the wide range of author
fees charged by gold OA journals suggests that the dichotomic
distinction between ‘diamond journals’ (no APCs) and ‘journals
charging APCs’ is not fully enlightening. Some journals that
charge small fees are possibly closer to the diamond ideal of pro-
viding a non-commercial venue for sharing research rather than
to the for-profit business of commercial publishers.
Other OA proponents did not take such a radical view and
assumed that journal publishing has costs that should be recov-
ered. They contended that APCs should be covered by research
funders as part of research costs, or by libraries, offsetting
expenses previously devoted to subscriptions. Nevertheless,
there were expectations that a change in publishing model could
still reduce costs. The notion was that APCs would bring about a
more competitive, transparent market than subscriptions.
Whereas the cost of subscriptions for reading the literature was
invisible to researchers, they would be aware of the costs of
APCs and would become sensitive to prices when a publishing
venue was chosen for their research. For research-intensive insti-
tutions, the adoption of the APC model would result in higher
costs.
Over the past two decades, commercial publishers adapted
their business model to include APCs, although the switch from
journal subscriptions to OA publication has not been completed
yet. Some transitional models, such as hybrid OA, have proved to
be harmful to research institutions, with hybrid journals charging
higher APCs than gold journals and no reductions in subscription
prices, leading institutions to ‘double dipping’. So far, there is no
evidence that transformative agreements, which bundle subscrip-
tion licences with APCs, have reduced library expenses.
In the current ‘publish or perish’ atmosphere, publishers
enjoy the market power that allows them to charge APCs above
the cost of publication. Commercial publishers fix APCs
depending on the reputation assigned to journals by peers. There
is ample evidence of the relationship between high impact met-
rics and higher and faster rising APCs. Even if researchers
develop any price sensitivity in selecting publication venues, they
make decisions based on the value assigned to journals by
research assessment committees that frequently reward publica-
tion in high impact factor journals.
Research on authors’ views regarding APCs and the sources
they use to pay them show large disciplinary variation. Most
authors express reluctance about this publishing model, except
for researchers in the medical and natural sciences who are used
to paying publication fees and have greater availability of
research funds. To pay APCs, authors rely on a mix of research
grants, library funds and personal assets.
Two major concerns have been raised in relation to APCs:
the inability of poorly funded authors to publish their results and
their potential negative impact on the quality of journals. In
response to the first issue, publishers state that they provide
waivers, although research shows little extension of their use,
unintended side effects on the composition of co-author net-
works and concerns regarding which criteria are used to qualify
for them. As regards journal quality, the concern raised by the
application of APCs is that author fees may introduce a conflict
of interests that leads journals to lessen the rigour of peer review
so as to be able to accept more submissions and thus increase
revenue. Since it is not possible to observe how journals inter-
nally manage the review of manuscripts, authors who want to
explore the real extent of this potential laxity in peer review have
compared the citation impact of journals that charge APCs with
that of journals that do not. Most of these studies concur that
there are no differences in citation impact between journals
based on APCs and journals relying on other sources of revenue.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were
generated or analysed during the current study.
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