Frontiers’ financial commitment to open access publishing | Frontiers Blog

"In 2014, the annual cost of traditional, subscription-based scholarly journal publishing was $14 Billion [1]. This money comes mostly from your university libraries, which are supported by the overheads from your grants. Your libraries pay subscription fees, so you can read the journal articles you need to do your research. Open Access does away with subscriptions to allow any reader in the world unrestricted access to scholarly articles. To provide this option, Open Access publishers directly charge the authors an Article Publishing Charge (APC), which authors typically pay from their grants or receive institutional support to cover the cost. The APC generally ranges from $500 to $6,000 with an industry average of around $3,000. Often people wonder “Where does this money go?” In a sentence, your payment covers the cost of producing high-quality publications and keeping this literature freely accessible, discoverable and permanent ..."