Publication Fee for IJBC ISSN 2225-2436-A Journal of Asian Society of Business and Commerce Research

To provide open access, Asian Society of Business and Commerce Research (ASBCR), 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 by charging a publication fee to the authors or research sponsors for each article they publish.

We charge from our authors a very fair amount of USD200.  Editors and reviewers have no access to author payment information, and hence inability to pay will not influence the decision to publish a paper. 

Questions about Publication Fee

Why should I have to pay to publish my paper?
It costs money to produce a peer-reviewed, edited, and formatted article that is ready for online publication, and to host it on a server that is accessible around the clock. Prior to that, a public or private funding agency has already paid a great deal more money for the research to be undertaken in the interest of the public. This real cost of "producing" a paper can be calculated by dividing your laboratory's annual budget by the number of papers published. We ask that—as a small part of the cost of doing the research—the author, institution, or funding agency pays a fee, to help cover the actual cost of the essential final step, the publication. (As it stands, authors now often pay for publication in the form of page or color charges.) Many funding agencies and universities now support this view.

Will ASBCR now have annual substantial price rises just like traditional publishers?
Our aim is to develop a sustainable Open-Access (OA) publishing operation. Like any good business, we keep all aspects of our organization under constant review, including pricing, costs, improvements in technology, alternative revenue streams such as advertising and sponsorship, philanthropic support, and membership. As a non-profit organization, we do not answer to shareholders and owners who seek ever increasing margins and we will ensure that any future price increases place as little burden as possible on authors.

What does ASBCR deliver for the publication fee?
Above all, ASBCR deliver OA. For you as an author, that means your work will have maximum impact. Anyone with an interest in your work will be able to find it, read it, download it, redistribute it, translate it, and so on. There is growing evidence that OA increases the usage and citation of published work. But it doesn't end there. In addition:

·         IJBC is frequently covered in the world's most prestigious academic databases

·         Authors have unlimited space to tell their story - there is no restriction on the numbers of pages, figures, tables etc in ASBCR journals i.e. IJBC

·         Authors retain their copyright and the right to be cited as the originators of their work.

·         ASBCR in the form of IJBC provide added value content plus summaries that increase understanding of your work.

·         IJBC editors deposit published papers immediately to the databases for great visibility.

Fee of USD200 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 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 and universities 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.

And charging for publication is not a new idea. Many traditional journals already charge authors to publish (for color reproduction, excess pages and reprints). These charges can also amount to several thousand dollars, but do not provide unrestricted access to your work like ASBCR do.

Ultimately, the fees that IJBC 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, and production of high-quality tagged electronic files, web hosting, and 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.

As our publishing operation grows ASBCR relies less on philanthropic support and more on our revenue from publication fees. The challenge for any organization like ASBCR is to ensure that our income from this variety of revenue streams is sufficient to cover our costs, and that we are steadily strengthening our financial independence. We have the mechanisms in place to ensure this balance, and are keeping all aspects of our business under regular review.

Aren't you just putting the financial burden of OA on authors?
Our goal is not to have publication charges place any additional financial burden on researchers. Publication is a fundamental part of the research process, and the costs of publication should therefore be treated as a small but essential part of the cost of research. Many of the funding agencies and universities that support research now recognize this view.