PLoS raises its processing fees

Starting next month, PLoS will raise its article processing fees for the first time. From the announcement:

To provide OA, PLoS journals use a business model in which our expenses - including those of peer review, of journal production, and of online hosting and archiving - are recovered in part through a publication fee to the authors or research sponsors for each article they publish. Now, with 3 years of operational experience to draw on, it is time for PLoS to adjust this model so that our publication fees reflect more closely the costs of publication. From 1st July 2006, the publication fee for our flagship journals PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine will be $2500; for our community journals PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Pathogens it will be $2000. PLoS Clinical Trials is priced at $2500.

The new prices compare favorably with the fees that authors often pay to publish their work in traditional journals (between $1000-$3000 for color charges, excess pages, reprints etc). And, in such journals, distribution is not unlimited as it is for PLoS, but is restricted to subscribers and those whose institutions have paid license fees....

A "no questions asked" fee waiver exists for authors who do not have funds to cover publication fees. In addition, editors and reviewers have no access to authors' payment information, and hence inability to pay will not influence the decision to publish a paper. These policies ensure that the fee is never a barrier to publication.

Also see these new questions from the PLoS FAQ:

$2500 is a lot to pay to publish an article isn't it?

Not when you consider the cost of the research that led to the article. Publication fees of $2000 or $2500 are a small fraction of the costs of doing research, and it makes sense for funding agencies to include these fees in research grants. Many funding agencies now support this view. They recognize that publishing is an integral part of the research process - and if the work is published OA it will deliver the maximum possible impact, which in turn maximizes the outcome of the funder's investment in research.

Ultimately, the fees that PLoS charge reflect the costs associated with publishing. We are not in this to make a profit - our bottom line is to make the literature a public resource. The administration of peer review, copy editing, production of high-quality tagged electronic files, web hosting, and so on are expensive processes. They are many of the same processes that are used in traditional subscription journals. If the money that currently supports subscription journals can be re-routed to cover publication fees then we will be able to support open access publishing in a fully sustainable way....

Can journals like PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine be supported by publication fees alone?

Possibly not.  These journals are run by professional editors, reject a large proportion of the submitted papers, and publish a great deal of added-value content.  They are therefore very expensive to run, but they are also representative of only the top tier of scientific journals, which includes Nature, Science, and The New England Journal of Medicine - a tiny fraction of the full complement of scholarly journals.  Publication fees provide an important revenue stream for PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, but this is also supplemented with income from philanthropy, advertisers, sponsors, membership and other parts of the publishing operation.

It's reasonable to ask why we started our publishing with two journals that present the biggest financial challenge in terms of how to support them.  The answer is that we felt it was critical to the success of open access that we provide journals of the highest standard.  They might not, by themselves, prove the publication fee model for open access publishing, but they provide us with the strongest possible foundation upon which to build our other publications.

Journals such as PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens, on the other hand, are much more typical of the scholarly literature as a whole.  These journals are run by outstanding academic editorial boards who generously donate their time to support the journals.  It is likely that these journals can be supported by publication fees alone.  We expect these journals to be close to breaking even within the next 2-3 years, which is rapid for any new journal. Our other projects such as PLoS ONE and PLoS Clinical Trials will also be supported mainly by publication fees.