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SciPoll 638: Presence of predatory Journals
How much should journals charge for publishing papers?
Results
(316 Answers)
Answer Explanations
- < $1000user-180243The issue is not the fee, rather it is the quality of the reviewers
- < $1000user-288010750 for letters, 1500 for articles
- 0user-615884I am totally against APCs but in favor of advertising in scientific journals.
- 0user-15180The writing of a scientific paper involves major intellectual efforts and funding to perform the research, and the investment should be returned the producers of the work. The profit of this work should be given to the ones that produce all the work, write and, many times, even edit and format the paper for the journal. Also peer-reviews are voluntary work. So in the end journals are taking advantage of other peoples' work.
- < $1000user-208008And they should pay reviewers if they are to be fair.
- < $1000user-120105I think the journals have a business model that could function nowhere else. You write the article, your peers then do their reviewing work for free, you then pay them for publishing your work which since it is largely e-publishing is very cheap for them. How can they lose??? That is why I think they should charge less, nevertheless I have paid many fold more than this value (<$1000) to publish work of mine that I feel was important.
- 0user-901497I think that APC should be based on paper’s novelty, quality, and the capacoty of the author to pay. For example for an indipendent researcher it is difficult to pay large amount APC
- 0user-645616their purpose should be about progressing knowledge and it should not be a money-maker mechanism. Academics do quite a bit for free ie reviewing papers. to charge what it is needed for the journals to break even.
- < $1000user-239098Depends if open access and the services they provide. Do they offer professional illustrations or language editing? Do they offer reimbursement of time costs to reviewers either through payment or free future publishing? Above $2000 is prohibitive for me and I am at a UK Russell Group university.
- 0user-696369Charging for publication only makes sense when people are getting big grants from foundation or the government. That only describes a proportion of academia. in my field, only sometimes do our grants allow us to include publication fees in our proposals. Does our university have a policy of subsidizing publication. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to publish in the world where we have to pay fees.
- 0user-412773We get the grant, if we do well. We pay the researchers. We do the work and write the paper. We asses papers from our peers, for free. And finally, if we want to read our own papers, we have to pay for subscription. This is a complete non-sense.
Why on Earth should we pay for publication?
The Mafia is a lot less greedy that all the editorials. I mean, the classic non-predatory editorials. - 0user-561710if they charge then they should pay reviewers for their time.
- 0user-104996I pick zero, but this depends.
- < $1000user-688273There is always going to be some cost associated with production, but over 1000$/€ is too much for what they do.
- < $2000user-776568It's only my opinion
- user-45613Ill-define question, in my view.
- 0user-477751publishers make lots of money by publishing research payed for by others, why should the author pay ?
- < $1000user-865400Don’t mind some fee. Improve peer review process
- 0user-523578Publication costs should be covered by subscriptions.
- < $1000user-414245It depends on what the journal does. If they process the formatting and typesetting, the fees would depend on the number of pages. In general fees should depend on the number of pages. There is a real issue with financing the costs of publishing papers, and it has been there for decades. Someone has to pay, and that has to come from the author's side - university, grant, personal funds etc. This is an unresolved issue in the journal publishing. What you may call "Predatory Journals" is arbitrary. With open source publishing, your paper gets the same exposure regardless of the journal you published in. Even the society journals are very expensive, and solicit papers. In some sense there is no such thing as a "Predatory Journal", as long as they publish the articles.
- < $2000user-106770Should maintain the quality of Peer review
- < $2000user-275661To run a publishing house costs money, even if many editors and reviewers work for free. As we have moved to many journals only providing e-copies, costs should have come down. Publication by students should not be hindered by cost. Also, there remain some staff who do not get funds from their university/grants to pay for these publications.
- 0user-733767usually research is tax money, with the reviewers working free of charge and the content being for the greater good. No money should be charged. Knowledge should be available for everybody
- < $1000user-874110We should really not get charge for publishing apart from covering publicaiton expenses. Only academics are charged to publish.
- < $1000user-611301We get tax payer dollars to do research. Therefore, should charge minimum.
- 0user-78071If they are to charge, it should not exceed $500
- 0user-370736This is not justified that a person whosoever is doing research research, pay money for the publication of research. The payment should be taken from the readers and that should not be exorbitantly high
- < $2000user-89669this cannot really be given in numbers, it all depends on quality! illustration, color, fonts, typo control, proofreading etc. ....
- < $1000user-866827Hard to answer given that the costs of the process are unknown to me.
- 0user-998570Often they do not as for Money or fees
- 0user-284209Pay reviewers and then journals can charge for publishing
- < $1000user-358518If you charge for publishing very high amount the manuscript of not good quality will get publish and good article will prefer to publish free of cost as they invest in doing good work.
- < $1000user-778496a reasonable amount
- < $1000user-44495I know the costs of employing copy editors and so on are high, but I don't think the costs should prohibit publication by those with no or little means to fund publications, eg those from developing countries or young researchers
- 0user-475346Financial barriers should not preclude publication of good science, otherwise we risk underrepresentation from smaller labs or developing countries and skew the literature toward established, well-funded investigators.
- 0user-695643If they are inviting me to submit an article, I should not be asked for any fee
- < $1000user-267246depends if open access
- 0User-850922Researcher do the writting and the peer reviewing. And even editing in some cases now. We are being charged for publishing. Authors should not be charged for publishing.
- 0user-594363They are already making money out of the research that they get for free, which is reviewed by other scientists for free. They literally get all their content for free, and their only costs are advertising (generic and focused on the publisher and not the science) and publishing house staff.
Other publishers (magazines, newspapers, books) will actually pay the people that write the content!!! - 0user-400829I believe that science should be freely accessible. Many researchers, especially those from developing countries, lack the resources to conduct their research, and more importantly, they lack the necessary funding to publish their work.
- > $3000user-145569These charges should be standardized in the $2000–5000 range, disclosed in advance, and allowed to be included in grant requests. If this increases the cost of publication, that would be worth the additional money. The journals should also pay peer reviewers for their reviews. A sample of the peer reviews, particularly if a reviewer frequently disagrees with other reviewers, should be submitted to additional reviewers for quality assurance and elimination of poor reviewers.
- < $1000user-141640Mainly for scientists from development countries, the fees are rarely paid by the Universities and the costs can be a hindrance for publication in certain Journals.
- 0user-445202Ciência não se cobra
- 0user-382369As long as the journals pay nothing to reviewers for the revisions, they should not charge a penny. The sicentific world is doing a lot of work for them to earn money and some of them earn billions per month
- < $3000user-574398There is a cost to publication, but it should not be overburdensome. It should be as low as possible, so that the journal can cover the cost of typesetting and electronic access but not so high that it becomes a major cost to the researcher (especially those from a non-affiliated institution).
- 0user-962329Free access to all
- < $1000user-169526This is not a rigid answer. I belive that countries like mine (Brazil), not classified as poor, are affected by the lack of investment for continuous research. The budget is very limited and often the authors must afford for the open access format.
The MDPI has a program that distributes vouchers for each complete review. The vouchers can be used to pay the APC. This is an intelligent type of adjustment for those with short fundings. - 0user-851905Papers that are not open access should be free of charge considering the fact that most are no longer printed.
- 0user-938667If a journal solicits a manuscript, why should I pay. I am semi retired and do not have grants to pay publication fees.
- < $1000user-358384many researchers in the world cannot afford high publication fees.
- < $3000user-357032Depends from the linked services (editing, graphics, and so on)
- < $1000user-631377If journal wants to conduct a fair peer review, they must pay reviewer without outcomes of paper acceptance and rejection.
- 0user-990457At least they ought to be NFP.
- 0user-153764Top quality tox journals do not charge for publication per se but do charge for open access.
- < $1000user-585934This amount can be used to cover the costs of publishing good articles.
- < $1000user-369733Journals should charge a modest fee, ideally below $1000, to ensure affordability for researchers, especially those from underfunded institutions or regions. This approach promotes inclusivity and equitable access to publishing opportunities, fostering a more diverse and comprehensive academic discourse.
- < $3000user-287804If it is open access a charge less than 3000 is reasonable.
- < $2000user-337025over 2000 US dollars or euro
- 0user-948023Science should be free for everyone to read and publish.
If anything, the fees should be very minimal and cover only administrative/processing fees. - < $2000user-957269A large part of the journals contacting me has 1500 USD of APC
- user-774962I have no idea.
- < $1000user-608413A serious journal may obtain sponsors for publication in academic societies, universities, etc
- 0user-109201Journals Should have both open access and subscription based. Accordingly, they should charge.
- < $2000user-548458I think up to 2000 is a good values for paying the publication in a Journal with high IF.
- 0user-309520The journals need scientific publications to exist.
- < $2000user-764600I think that universities should negotiate agreements for faculty and students. Sometimes reputable publishers charge exorbitant fees also some fields (e.g. Operations Research) have limited readership wholst journals such as Nature have huge readership. Some consideration shoukd be given to interdisciplinary reaadership v. narrow areas and fees should be ajusted accordingly.
- < $1000user-925409While I am not a business expert, journals should not exploit the investigator. The system should not be profit driven.
- < $1000user-689147Charging for publishing makes it very difficult for new professionals and/or those at non-research 1 institutions to be able to publish.
- 0user-225569Open Science Journal should be the realitiy today
- < $1000user-839058it may depend on the precence and number of color figures in the manuscript
- 0user-927811Sharing of research should be free. We spend time doing research which costs money, we write papers, and then we have to pay a journal to publish our paper, from which they will profit!
- 0user-861466having no external funding for most of my research, I depend on journals without publication fees.
- 0user-813332If they can't get support form professional groups, institutions, or some advertising, then they probably are not making an impact anyway.
- < $1000user-685143Many young scientists in developing countries have very limitted fund, so if publishing charge over 1000$ will be diffitult for them to publish to open journals.
- < $1000user-566545Given I peer-review for free, and do the research I should not then have to publish or at least not much
- < $1000user-266855Affordability, journals should not be for-profit enterprises they should use local currencies when possible not euro's or dollars which are unfairly highly rated and thus exchange rates often bear no relation to reality.
- 0user-497412Low or no fees enable authors from developing nations to send their manuscripts for consideration in high-impact journals.
- < $2000user-921990Based on what professional societies charge for their journals.
- < $1000user-244325On top of all the other moral and ethical reasons to not charge so much for publishing (researchers aren't paid for publishing, younger researchers or those from poorer countries/institutions are disadvantaged, high fees discourage open access), predatory journals is yet another: if scamming wasn't so lucrative it wouldn't be so common or sophisticated. I understand charging a nominal fee for publishing, but the majority of the cost should be borne by Universities and other institutions who provide access to the journals for their researchers and students. Of course, having journals operate as non-profits would be a good idea too.
- 0user-469309Despite the effort and time, authors should be asked for funding their papers
- 0user-193278I have been publishing for over 35 years without paying and have published over 100 papers, it's hard to even think that I now have to pay for it. I consider this to be beneficial to others as well as to me, therefore, subscription and or those needing paper should pay
- 0user-616368They are getting income from saling access to institutions and libraries all over the world to work that is mostly funded by the goverments os each country. Thus, they are getting enormous profits from public funded work and they charge this same institutions for getting more income. At least, unfair.
- 0user-697831Science should be free for everyone.
- < $1000user-801044If a journal have a physical issue the cost of print and distribution etc. should be included. However, many journals do not have a physical print, and thus only have editorial costs. This should be reflected by the publication cost. This is clearly not the case at present with exorbitant profits from the publishers.
- 0user-672631Open publishing all the way around for everybody.
- < $1000user-821404About 500-800 USD is a quantity reasonable to support the maintenance and investments required to support the system
- 0user-149708they are too many scientific journals, too many papers. Journals should be non profit and founded by a system independent of capitalism. They are several solutions to do so.
- < $2000user-81297I believe that predatory journals are not directly correlated with the publishing fee. However, I believe that fee larger than 2000 $ is very unacceptable considering that most of the work is done by authors (formatting, etc.)
- 0user-730039monies take away from being able to support students
i am retired from research still active at university teaching cannot pay publishing fees but would like to write reviews doing book chps at no charge - < $1000user-335059With digital publishing, the costs of hosting a paper have dramatically declined. Some fee to publish is understandable under the current model, but some of the gold open access rates are in excess of $5000, which is not justified.
- 0user-211258Unless it is an open source journal. Then $2000.
- 0user-684526I would say just enough to basically cover costs. That may vary from one journal to another.
- 0user-480186Journals should be subscription based.
- 0user-77256Scholarly publishing should be free as knowledge is for sharing. The publisher can mobilize resources through subscription, advertisements and similar others
- < $1000user-780649We, research in academia depend on external funding who in most cases does not allow an anual budget of more than $2000 for publication. Hence, publishing in open access is never acceptable by most funding agencies as the cost for one publish. We end up using our personal resources to publish for our work and career.
- 0user-49719They make money out of selling journal subscriptions, anyway, so this amounts to double-dipping. Fees should be paid only when the paper is distributed to the public for free.
- 0user-78773They have the copyright of our research
- < $1000user-573537Perhaps they should establish policies to charge in accordance to the sponsoring institutions or companies. It is understandable that article processing charges are a factor, but some prestigious journal have such fees that render them unachievable to independent or non-corporation researchers.
- < $2000user-987379Depending on the journals and the open access fees as well.
- 0user-259085scientific publishing should be totally free and open. this is my opinion.
- < $1000user-46958Si no tienes financiación, y no te dedicas exclusivamente a la investigación, como es mi caso, resulta complicado financiar las publicaciones.
- 0user-753537I belief the current system makes no sense: researchers pay journals to get published, do reviewing and editing work for journals for free(!), and also pay to read articles in journals by others.
- < $2000user-327335Publication fees are reasonable to ask and open access costs more, but fees may be waived for academics.
- 0user-378118from the 200 publications in first-class cardiology journals, I have never paid - except for the desired reprints. I do not intent to.
- < $1000user-864496Considering the cost, I can't imagine publishing an article costs more than $1k.
- < $1000user-197437Many people doesn't published by expensive price
- < $1000user-975922Publishing has become a business outside academia. Publishing fee should not be higher as it badly impact the scientists and students from developing countries to get their work published.
- < $1000user-771635Since most of the journals not longer print their issues costs should be reduced. Unless, they pay for peer review.
- < $1000user-844522The publication fees should range from 0 to $1000 and never more. Otherwise the industry will get too much commercialized and eventually lead to low level publications.
- 0user-676638In countries like India, no funding agency grants separate money for APC. Further when in all other fields the writer is paid roylaty by the publisher, why only in Sciences, mony flows in reverse direction? Almost all pubishers get service of reviewers and editors for free. APC is justified only if reviewers are paid by publishers, and peer-review is completed within defined timelines. In such cases too, APC must not exceed $1000. One of the main reasons why predatory journals could get some success is the unreasonably lenghty time periods taken by conventional journals from submission to publication (it may be few months to >1 year!).
- 0user-284769This is an extremely incorrect question. What these amounts refer to - 'flat' APC, page fees or what? If page charges, is it per page? If APC, is it the same for a 3-page case report or 60-page 'monograph'?