Creating and distributing scholarly publications takes time and resources. Who covers the expense of developing these works from early iterations of research findings to final publications of record?

Sales and Subscriptions

Many journals and books are still funded by the fees that individuals, libraries, and other organizations pay to access them. Recent decades have seen shifts from paper to electronic formats and from outright purchase to licensing, but this basic model remains the same: the cost is borne by institutions and individual readers.

Publication Charges

Creating and distributing scholarly publications takes time and resources. Who covers the expense of developing these works from early iterations of research findings to final publications of record?

Sales and subscriptions represent income acquired after publication; alternatively, publishers can charge authors before content is published. In the context of open access publication, these author fees are called APCs (Article Processing Charges) or BPCs (Book Processing Charges).

Open access publishing is not the only setting in which authors may face publication charges. Many publishers charge authors fees (like page charges, color charges, or submission fees) on top of the subscription or purchase price for their journals and books. 

Authors faced with APCs or other publication charges may:

Other Support Models

Author-facing publishing charges get a lot of attention, but most journals don’t fund their publications this way. Support for scholarly publishing can come from numerous sources, and a particular journal or book publisher might rely on one or a combination of several. Possibilities include:

  • Volunteer labor – Most journals rely on the volunteer labor of authors and peer reviewers to minimize expenses. Others, like most law reviews, are run entirely by unpaid students.
  • Community-supported open access – Some publishers raise funds to cover open publication costs by asking organizations that benefit from their publications, such as libraries and academic departments, to make financial contributions. This model is commonly called Diamond OA. Initiatives like the Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP) provide a mechanism for managing those contributions centrally.
  • Conditional open access – In these models, including Subscribe to Open (S2O), publishers set a revenue target that must be met by subscriptions or purchases in order for a journal or book to be made open access. If the target is not met, subscribers or purchasers are still ensured access to the (closed) content.
  • Institutional publishing – Some academic libraries provide no/low-cost open access publishing programs and platforms for their academic communities. eScholarship Publishing, for example, at the University of California has an extensive journal publishing program.
  • Reducing costs through low cost and open source tools – Publishers can reduce expenses by using open source tools like Open Journal Systems, Janeway, and Open Monograph Press. 
  • Grants and endowments – Scholars interested in publishing, as well as established publishers, can apply for funding from granting organizations (such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, or the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) to provide financial support for projects, including open access publishing initiatives. As mentioned above, an author publishing with a journal that charges APCs can use research grant funds, when the rules of a grant permit it.
  • Consortial subsidies – Some programs, such as SCOAP3 and Knowledge Unlatched, pool money from libraries to support publishers that make content openly available.
  • Advertising – Some publishers generate revenue by including paid promotional material in their publications.
  • Membership fees – Some scholarly societies and other membership organizations use membership fee revenue to support publication programs. Membership benefits may include reading access to content and/or open access publishing without additional fees.
  • Free online version/paid print version – Particularly in the case of open access books, publishers may offer a print version for sale to libraries and individual readers, in addition to the freely available online version.

For a longer list with more examples, see the Open Access Directory’s pages on OA book business models and OA journal business models. Note that many of these strategies aren’t just relevant for open access publications; they are also used in conjunction with sales and subscriptions.

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