Comparison of Article Processing Fees on Open Access Journals with a 4.5-Year History of Publishing

Abstract

Open access article (synonym: open access publication) is a type of peer-reviewed article which gives a possibility to the readers to read and download it free of charge owing to paying an open access publication fee (OAPF) directly by its authors, their institutions, or funders.1 According to Solomon and Björk`s study, who analyzed about 1,370 journals, article processing charges range from 8 to 3,900 US Dollars.1, 2 Moreover, the official Elsevier`s page dedicated to the list of all company`s open access journals indicated that an article processing charge can reach 6,000 US Dollars excluding tax.3 First publishing houses that supported and develop open access journals have been two new academic publishers – BioMed Central (BMC) and Public Library of Science (PLoS).1 In 2000, they began establishing journals that rely on open access publication fee.1 Most motivation criteria for the authors from the fields of oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontics in choosing to what peer-reviewed journal submit their paper may be classified under three chief groups: 1) indexing and abstracting in different recognized data bases (PubMed/Medline,4 Scopus, Web of Science, etc.), 2) an impact metric,5 and 3) an amount of the article processing charge. First two motivation criteria are precisely described in recent publications but the last one – open access publication fee and its amount – should be investigated more scrupulously.4, 5 There is a great need to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of OAPF both for authors and editorial staff/publishers. This is the aim of this study in order to understand the advantages and disadvantages the payment methods.