Abstract
Open access journals which charge article processing charges (APCs) sometimes offer fee waivers to authors who cannot afford to pay them. This article measures the extent of this practice among the largest toll access and open access publishers by gathering stated fee waiver policies from publishers’ websites. A majority (68.8%) were found to offer fee waivers and sometimes they are only available to authors from low- and middle-income countries. This has implications for the ability of authors without funding to publish in journals from these publishers.
Highlights
Open access journals make their content openly available for anyone to read and re-use without needing to pay a subscription fee to access it
Still others are funded by charging fees known as article processing charges (APCs) in order to publish articles
The final selection resulted in a list of 16 toll access publishers and 18 open access publishers
Summary
Open access journals make their content openly available for anyone to read and re-use without needing to pay a subscription fee to access it. The practice has grown more widespread over the last few years because large commercial publishers all offer a “hybrid” option for the majority of their journals This hybrid option allows authors to make an article open access within an otherwise closed access journal by paying an APC. This article will address the lack of research on fee waivers by collecting information to find out how many publishers and journals offer them It will examine what the terms of the waivers are, in particular looking at whether they are exclusively offered to authors from low- and middle-income countries or whether other criteria are considered
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