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Article
processing charges policy
Open access publishing provides free and immediate online access to
published
literature for anyone in the world to read, distribute, and reuse.
ISISnet, as a gold open access publisher, offsets all the costs involved in our high-quality publishing service through article processing charges
(APCs). All accepted articles after rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to authors. APCs are
our sole revenue stream. There are no charges for rejected articles, no
submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article,
figures or supplementary data.
Authors with insufficient funding are eligible for
discounts to their article processing charges, provided their article passes
our rigorous peer review that allowing everybody to
benefit from open access publication.
Our APC rates are highly competitive (see comparison below).
APCs pay for our people who run our editorial programs, build new technology
for us, and
deliver premium services on our open science website. APCs also
allow us to continually re-invest in growing our journal portfolio.
ISISnet' APCs
The table below displays the ISISnet fee policy.
Journal-specific APCs with automatic special discounted fee for
inland/Pakistani authors are listed on each journal's page, which may also contains
some journal-specific article types like case reports. Please note that APCs are subject to
periodic revision.
What our APCs cover
ISISnet has always been transparent about how our APCs are
invested. This spirit of transparency is in line with Coalition S for Plan S
(https://www.coalition-s.org).
1. Journal operations
Our journal teams manage every aspect of journal operations and growth,
from editorial board management, to commissioning high-quality content,
handling article collections, and supporting our editors.
2. Review operations
We have clearly defined quality standards for research and peer review.
Our research integrity team checks and sorts research articles for quality,
ethics and research integrity. Quality checks are monitored and improved
continuously, allowing for improvements as well as automation of processes,
such as integration into AIRA, our Artificial Intelligence Review Assistant.
Our review operations team ensures that quality standards are adhered to
during peer review, that the appropriate experts are assigned to the
manuscripts, and that editors are supported at every step of the process.
They also provide rigorous feedback to the authors so that each stage of the
review process advances in an effective and timely manner.
2. Publication
Production costs include typesetting and copy-editing, assignment of
persistent identifiers, journal indexing, archiving in all relevant academic
and national databases, and permanent storage, such as CLOCKSS.
3. Innovation and new technologies adoptation
We have a relentless focus on technology and innovation to continuously
raise the bar for our services and quality standards, make processes simpler
and more efficient, and the work of our authors, reviewers, and editors
easier. APC income is reinvested in this space to allow for the deployment
of new platform tools and services, including AIRA. See our history for a
timeline of our innovations and awards.
4. Communications
We support our authors, reviewers, and editors by disseminating and
promoting their research through news media, social media, newsletters,
article alerts, our news site (Innovative Science), conferences, and by organizing and sponsoring
scientific and social events.
5. General administration
APCs also cover general operations, including human resources and
accounting, as well as costs of administrative functions and office rental.
6. Inclusive growth
Investment in growth supports new publication initiatives across the
academic spectrum. Higher APCs in mature journals subsidize the launch of
new journals before they become self-sustainable.
7. Honoraria
Advisory Board and Chief editors are awarded honoraria for their work and strictly
independent from acceptance decisions.
8. Outreach and awards
APCs, together with other funding sources, also support our scientific
outreach programs, including:
Innovative Science Forum (ISF), where leading scientists involved in
innovative research provides science based solutions for
problems and challenges to humanity.
9. The cost of rejections
ISISnet does not set acceptance or rejection rates. Instead, our
editorial policy is based on clearly defined quality standards and certifies
objective quality, validity, and rigor of research. Articles that pass
rigorous peer review performed are accepted, articles that do not are
rejected.
As submissions have been increasing over the past years, so have rejections.
About 40% of submitted articles for all our journals are
rejected, reaching over 60% in some journals.
While APCs are only applied to accepted/published articles, the substantial work
associated with rejections pre-review (quality control and triaging) and
post-review, is also covered by APC income and contributes significantly to
the setting of the APC.
APCs comparison with other publishers
We analyzed that for fully gold open access journals of the 10 largest publishers mean APC is US$2,371 and the highest APC is US$8,900
For hybrid journals from the 10 largest publishers, mean APC is
US$3,410 while the highest APC is US$11,390
For a subscription article, the range of revenue is between US$4,000 and
US$9,000
While our APCs range from 100US$ to 250US$ only that is
around ten time less as compared to other gold open access publishers.
Fee discounts
Our fee support program (partial or full) i.e. Open Access Support Fund (OASF) ensures that all articles that pass peer review
can benefit from open access – regardless of the author's field or funding
situation.
To apply for fee support, please write us at the time of submission. Be
ensured that your request for a fee support will not influence whether your
submission is accepted or rejected for publication.
Refund policy
Once an article has been accepted for publication, an
Article Processing Charge is due. The submitting author assumes
responsibility for the Article Processing Charge, and ISISnet will not issue
refunds of any kind.
ISISnet will refund an article processing charge (APC) if
an error on our part has resulted in a failure to publish an article under
the open access terms selected by the authors. This may include the failure
to make an article openly available on the journal platform, or publication
of an article under a different Creative Commons licence from that selected
by the author(s). A refund will only be offered if these errors have not
been corrected within 60 days of publication. If you become aware of an
error in the open access status or licensing of your article, please contact
us.
APCs will not be refunded when articles are withdrawn
by authors after acceptance at any stage or retracted as a result of author
error or misconduct.
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