Cardiovascular Journal of Africa: Vol 32 No 3 (MAY/JUNE 2021)

5 / 66

CARDIOVASCULAR JOURNAL OF AFRICA • Volume 32, No 3, May/June 2021 AFRICA 115
Costing academic publications: author-pay principle, and
manuscript submission and article processing charges
PA Brink
Dataism, an emerging ‘religion’! All data should be freely
available (explained in Homo Deus by Harari). Followers ‘believe
all good things – including economic growth – depend on the
freedom of information.’1
So it is with open-access scientific publications – free-to-read
medico-scientific research reports on easily accessible sites on the
internet. No paywall! With the so-called gold model, which the
Cardiovascular Journal of Africa (CVJA) incidentally has, this is
immediate availability on the day of publication.
The information may be free to the reader. However, there is
a cost, one that is born by the author (or institute), the so-called
author-pay principle, in contrast to a reader-pay principle. With
the traditional reader-pay model, additional means of support
are (almost were nowadays) advertising in printed versions (or
facsimiles on the journal website), and membership fees of the
society that produces a journal. Also, institutional libraries will
subscribe to journals. Remember the shelves filled with bound
volumes of journals?
In the absence of paper and ink, current web-based publication
may be cheaper, but there is still a cost. So, what are authors (or
their institutions or benefactors) paying for? Where does the
cost lie?2,3
A landing site and software is needed to register new
manuscripts, track submissions through the review process, allow
editors to manage the review process, and maintain a reviewer
database: an editorial manager. A system must be in place to take
accepted manuscripts and convert them into actual articles that
are ready to post. A journal website needs to be maintained and
published articles need to be hosted, also for posterity. Servers
now replace the shelves in a library to maintain the archives.
Lastly, some personnel and utilities, such as electricity and water,
need to be paid.
Luckily, with the time-honoured practice where scientists
devote free time for reviewing and editing manuscripts, these
functions do not add to the costs.
With the author-pay principle, two classes of fees, namely
pre- and post-acceptance are of importance. I will discuss one
in each class as it pertains to the CVJA, namely, the manuscript-
submission fee (MSF, pre-acceptance) and the article-processing
charge (APC, post acceptance).
Firstly, it needs to be appreciated that both accepted and
rejected manuscripts cost money (excluding time spent by the
personnel). The moment the processing is logged with Editorial
Manager (EM), the full fee per article is billed by EM, even if it
is rejected up front. With a high rejection rate, if only an APC
is charged, the cost of publication falls on the small number of
accepted manuscripts.
So the MSF decreases competition for review and acceptance4
where an author may feel the work will not easily be accepted.
It also carries some of the cost of the reviewing process. One of
the negatives mentioned in the literature is that it may create a
bias towards accepting articles, however, the CVJA keeps the fee
very modest.
Interestingly, as a model, the take up of open access has
been higher in low-income countries, not the developed high-
income countries where the concept originated.5 It may change
as major national research agencies and funders from 12
European countries have taken a strong stand with Plan S. This
plan mandates that all public-funded research be published in
open-access (OA) journals where information is freely available
on the date of publication. Even publishing in hybrid journals,
journals that are part OA and part propriety, often subscription
based, will not be allowed. The reason for maintaining the latter
status quo is that some highly esteemed journals still attract
subscriptions or are supported by membership fees of a society.3
This edition sees an increase in the APC to R7 200. The MSF,
which is modest, remains the same, at R1 000.
Cost was and always has been an issue, even in the days
of Sir Isaac Newton, as recounted in chapter 10 of the most
comprehensive biography about him.6 Realising the explosive
importance of Isaac Newton’s work on the orbits of planets and the
mathematics that goes with it, Edmund Halley, of Halley’s comet
fame, saw to it and funded one of the most influential publications
ever, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687).
The Royal Society could not help as it had nearly bankrupted
itself publishing a book on fishes, Historia piscium (The History
of Fishes). This nearly crippled the society and the recently
wedded Halley couple. Halley was paid by the Royal Society with
50 exemplars of the Historia piscium! But one cannot eat books!
Some consolation, he had a comet named after him! Realising
that a particularly bright comet historically kept coming back to
earth, he calculated a 76-year cycle using principles expounded by
Newton. His prediction of its reappearance in 1758 was correct.
References
1. Harari YN. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage, 2016.
Accessed July 2, 2021.
deus/9781784703936.html
2. Schimel J. Why does it cost $2000 to publish a paper? Or: the fiction of
an ‘Article Processing Charge’ | Writing Science. Accessed July 1, 2021.
2000-to-publish-a-paper-or-the-fiction-of-an-article-processing-charge/
3. Haug CJ. No free lunch – what price Plan S for scientific publishing? N
Engl J Med 2019; 380(12): 1181–1185.
4. Michaela P. Understanding submission and publication fees. AJE Scholar.
Accessed July 1, 2021.
sion-and-publication-fees/
5. Iyandemye J, Thomas MP. Low-income countries have the highest
percentages of open-access publication: A systematic computational
analysis of the biomedical literature. PLoS One 2019; 14(7).
6. Westfall RS. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge
University Press, 1983.
University of Stellenbosch and SA Endovascular, South Africa
PA Brink, MB ChB, PhD
Editorial