Ross Mounce

Urgh. Look at this dodgy journal marketing from IWA Publishing:

No Author Fees*

*No author fees: where institutionally supported, for authors from low-income countries, or for articles with significant societal impact

I think what IWA Publishing meant to say is that YES, this journal does charge author-side fees, but there are some ways in which these author-side fees can be avoided if you meet certain criteria.

DOAJ correctly displays that this journal charges APCs

#OpenAccess #APCs

Debora Weber-Wulff

Dorothy Bishop calculates in
"New publishing models will only work if authors embrace them": deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/07/

"Meanwhile, between 2021-2025 around US$973 million* in APCs has gone into the coffers of publishers - money that could have been used to fund researchers in other ways. On a rough estimate, around US$197 million of this has been paid to the most popular publisher, MDPI."

How many researchers and teachers could be paid if instead "Open Research Europe" (open-research-europe.ec.europa) was publishing their results?

#AcademicChatter
#AcademicPublishing
#Publishing
#Research
#APCs

New publishing models will only work if authors embrace them

Complaints about the broken academic publishing system…

deevybee.blogspot.com
petersuber

The #NIH is calling for public comments on its plan to cap the use of grant funds to pay #APCs. It seeks comments on five listed options and/or suggestions for other options.
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/no

The comment deadline is September 15, 2025. The NIH plans to start implementing its APC-capping policy on January 1, 2026.

#Funding #Medicine #OAintheUSA

NOT-OD-25-138: Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs

NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide…

grants.nih.gov
Jul 31, 2025, 14:20 · · · 4 · 0
petersuber

"#Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of #AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket."
fortune.com/2025/07/16/delta-m

PS: Lots to hate here. But suppose the model spreads to other industries. (Yes, this is sci-fi for now. But let your imagination run free.) Imagine that academic #publishers used this model to set #APCs. What would AI tools infer from your institutional affiliation (about available resources), first name (about gender), surname (about ethnicity), submitted manuscript (about guesstimated quality), and past publications (about specialization, reputation, impact)? What odd variables would it factor in, such as the number of Trump-banned words (for political protection) or the number of citations to that journal (for #JIF)? How would it use all this information? Would it lower the #APC for you, to bring you in, or raise it, to price you out?

For airlines or journals, would there be any reason to stick with the model if it didn't raise net revenues?

#Economics #Prices #ScholComm

Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket

The airline touted a partnership with an AI-enabled…

Fortune
petersuber

Update. Here are two new bits on this story:
medpagetoday.com/washington-wa

* #NIH director Jay Bhattacharya has been railing against #APCs in conservative news outlets like Charlie Kirk and the Disinformation Chronicle. It looks like opposition to APCs is a warmly received #MAGA talking point. It's almost as if #Republicans supported equity and equitable access but didn't want to use those words.

* The NIH plans to set the APC cap by this by October, at the start of its 2026 fiscal year.

#DefendResearch #OpenAccess #ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

NIH to Cap How Much Journals Can Charge Authors for Open Access

Exact amount still to be determined, agency says

www.medpagetoday.com
Jul 11, 2025, 15:06 · · · 3 · 0
petersuber

Springer Nature makes clear that federally-funded authors who want to publish in SN journals will have to pay #APCs.
springernature.com/gp/open-sci

If you're a fed-funded author, then submitting your manuscript to one of SN's non-OA or subscription-based journals, to avoid the APC, is not an option for you. Those SN journals will desk-reject your submissions without regard to relevance or merit.

When you face a publisher demand for an APC, remember what the fee really buys. It buys entry to publish in that particular journal (assuming manuscript acceptance). It does not buy compliance with your funder policy. Compliance with your funder policy is free of charge and you can always take your submission to another journal or another publisher.

#NIH #OpenAccess #Publishers #SpringerNature

US federal agency public access policy compliance | Open science | Springer Nature

www.springernature.com
Jul 02, 2025, 17:23 · · · 9 · 0
petersuber

An editorial in _Microbial Biotechnology_ argues that journals aiming to maximize the number of papers published, in part to maximize #APCs, are "promoting an insidious degradation of rigour and quality standards of reviewing–editing practices. Such predatory practices result in the systematic degradation of research quality and its “truthfulness”. Moreover, they undermine the science ethos and threaten to create a new generation of scientists that lack this ethos. These trends will inevitably progressively erode public trust in scientists and the research ecosystem."
enviromicro-journals.onlinelib

Since the authors don't mention it, I'll mention that non-APC #OpenAccess (#DiamondOA) journals don't create this problem or even carry the risk.

#ScholComm

petersuber

The Royal Society of Chemistry (#RSC) just issued a vague and puzzling statement about its plans.
rsc.org/news/our-evolving-appr

It once planned to convert all its journals to #OpenAccess by 2028. By which it apparently meant #APC-based OA. But after talking with customers in different parts of the world, it learned that some regions "are not yet ready for fully OA." By which it means APC-based OA. "The resounding message we heard over and over is that one size cannot fit all." By which it means that not all can pay APCs.

"It became clear that we needed to adapt our vision for openness to account for a landscape that is increasing in complexity and no longer coalescing around a single direction for open research." As if the global landscape had ever coalesced around support for APCs.

But RSC is still committed to some kind of transition to OA. "We are now shaping our future OA approach to support authors in ways that suit them best in a local context."

If it plans to support no-APC forms of OA, it carefully avoids saying so. It never mentions #GreenOA and never endorses #DiamondOA. (It mentions one diamond OA initiative in Africa, but it's not an RSC initiative.)

I'm guessing that it plans to rely on locally customized #ReadAndPublish agreements. (I've argued that all such agreements use APCs in disguise.) But if so, why not say so? If it has other models in mind for regions "not ready" for APC-based OA, why not say what they are?

#APCs #South #ScholComm

Changing with the times: our evolving approach to open access

Shaping our Open Access approach amid a complex, evolving…

Royal Society of Chemistry
petersuber

Update. Here's a published article making a cluster of false claims about #OpenAccess journals: "In the OA model…costs are…covered by Article Processing Charges (#APCs) paid by the authors (#GoldOA); in relatively rare cases, some funders cover the full costs of a journal (#DiamondOA) to make it free for readers and authors alike."
ssph-journal.org/journals/inte

1. It claims that most OA journals charge APCs and that diamond OA journals are rare. But most OA journals do NOT charge APCs and diamond OA journals predominate.

Today the #DOAJ (@DOAJ) lists 21,597 OA journals, of which 13,735 or 63.5% are diamond.
doaj.org/

2. It claims that at APC-based OA journals, APCs are (always) paid by authors. But while this tends to be true in the global south, even there it's only a tendency, not a universal truth. In the north, APCs are usually NOT paid by authors but by their funders or employers.
suber.pubpub.org/pub/j1jk6hu9

3. There are many ways to fund a diamond or non-APC OA journals, not just by having funders cover their costs.

BTW, this piece is called a "commentary" and might not have been peer-reviewed.

In the rest of the piece, the authors complain about misunderstandings of their journal.

SSPH+ | Conspiracies in Academia? Stand Up Against Defamations of Open Access Journals!

through subscriptions while also charging APCs to authors…

SSPH+
Jun 03, 2025, 18:05 · · · 5 · 0
DOAJ

DOAJ and EZB: Working together for more visibility of information on publishing.

A new collaboration will see DOAJ and EZB contribute to greater transparency in scholarly publishing, empowering authors with the information they need to make informed publishing decisions

#DOAJ #metadata #APCs #transparency #ScholComm #OpenAccess

All details at blog.doaj.org/2025/04/10/doaj-

DOAJ and EZB: Working together for more visibility of information on publishing – DOAJ Blog

blog.doaj.org
Peter Suber

Here's another piece that made it through peer review (at Oxford UP) falsely assuming that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs. doi.org/10.1093/ejct... The author concludes that there is *not* too much OA, but only because APC discounts and waivers exist. #ScholComm

Too much of a good thing? Rede...

Bluesky

Bluesky Social
petersuber

Update. Here's another piece that made it through peer review (at Oxford UP) falsely assuming that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs.
doi.org/10.1093/ejcts/ezaf092

The author concludes that there is *not* too much OA, but only because APC discounts and waivers exist. Imagine how much she could have strengthened her argument by bringing in #DiamondOA and #GreenOA.

#ScholComm

Mar 23, 2025, 14:16 · · · 2 · 0
petersuber

@joshisanonymous
Bracketing the problem of deciding which journals are "prominent", we have a good answer from the Directory of Open Access Journals (#DOAJ, @DOAJ). As of today, it lists 21,452 #OpenAccess journals, of which 13,712 are #DiamondOA or charge no #APCs. Hence. 63.9% (≈ 64%) of DOAJ-listed journals charge no APCs.

Mar 21, 2025, 18:20 · · · 2 · 0
petersuber

Update. Here's another unrefereed letter to the editor (this time at Physics Today) falsely asserting that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs, effectively denying the existence and prevalence of no-APC OA (#DiamondOA) journals , and failing to acknowledge the existence of OA repositories (#GreenOA).
pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/arti

Mar 21, 2025, 13:24 · · · 1 · 0
Beate Rajski

@obibJournal @bmittermaier Danke für den Artikel! In den Bibliotheken sind wir wahrscheinlich überzeugt von den drei Schlussfolgerungen. Für die Kommunikation in die Hochschulen eine Herausforderung. Zu schnell wird die Diskussion auf #APCs reduziert. „Meine“ @tub hat sich deshalb schon länger dafür entschieden, unter #OpenAccess finanzieren unsere drei Säulen im Sinne des #informationsbudget sichtbar zu machen: #Publikationsfonds #Transformationsverträge & #diamondoa tub.tuhh.de/publizieren/openac

Open Access finanzieren - Universitätsbibliothek TU Hamburg

Die Auswahl einer Übersicht der Verlagsvereinbarungen…

Universitätsbibliothek TU Hamburg
Feb 24, 2025, 21:59 · · · 4 · 0