At PeerPremier we charge $1,100 USD to the authors for each submitted manuscript. From this, $300 USD goes to each of the three reviewers who submit their review within a week and PeerPremier keeps $200 as a administrative fee. If you are a scientist conducting regular peer reviews you can support every submission to PeerPremier with three reviews you conduct for PeerPremier, an approach that should be common practice within an academic field, even if peer review is free. Therefore the actual fee per submission is $200 USD.
Academic publishers provide a range of services to authors who want to publish their research and scholarship. Some of these services are:
- Peer review: Academic publishers ensure that the manuscripts they receive are evaluated by experts in the field, who provide feedback and suggestions for improvement. Peer review helps to maintain the quality and integrity of academic publishing.
- Editing and production: Academic publishers may work with authors to improve the clarity, style, and format of their manuscripts, and to prepare them for publication in print or digital formats. Editing and production services may include copyediting, proofreading, typesetting, design, illustration, indexing, and metadata creation.
- Marketing and distribution: Academic publishers promote and disseminate the published works to the relevant audiences, such as libraries, institutions, researchers, students, and professionals. Marketing and distribution services may include advertising, catalogues, social media, online platforms, e-books, open access options, and sales channels.
- Support and guidance: Academic publishers offer various forms of support and guidance to authors throughout the publishing process, such as author hubs, webinars, workshops, FAQs, user guides, language services, ethical policies, and author agreements.
The costs of scientific publishing are a topic of debate and controversy in the academic community. Scientific publishing involves various expenses, such as staff, distribution, printing, editing, peer review, and plagiarism checking. The average cost to the publisher of producing an article is estimated to be around $3500 to $4000, but this may vary depending on the journal and the publishing model. The following table shows some examples of open access fees in the life sciences and medical sciences, based on data from various sources .
| Journal | Publisher | Fee (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| PLOS Biology | Public Library of Science | 3,150-5,500 |
| BMC Biology | BioMed Central | 3290 |
| eLife | eLife Sciences Publications | 2,500-3,000 |
| Scientific Reports | Nature Research | 2,390 |
| PeerJ | PeerJ Inc. | 1,195-1,595 |
| Journal of Biological Chemistry | American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology | 2,800 |
| Frontiers in Neuroscience | Frontiers Media | 2,950 |
| Journal of Neuroscience Research | Wiley Online Library | 4,640 |
| Cell Reports Medicine | Cell Press | 5,460 |
| Nature | Springer | 11,250 |
The table shows that open access fees can vary significantly across journals and publishers, even within the same field. Some factors that may influence the fee include the reputation and impact of the journal. The costs of scientific publishing are not transparent or standardized, and there is no clear consensus on what constitutes a fair and reasonable fee for publishing an article.