The publishing costs at EMBO

"The current debate on the appropriate costs for article-processing charges (APCs) in Open Access (OA) publishing is to some extent based on speculation and guesswork. This is in part because few publishers and journals have disclosed their costs and charges and what they consist of, making it near impossible to assess the true cost of publishing a paper. This is particularly important in the context of the stipulations included in the European Open Access initiative ‘Plan S’ and possible caps on APCs that funders may decide to impose.

An open discussion of what it costs to run and maintain high quality, selective journals, and who should pay, is only possible on the basis of real data. EMBO, with its mission to serve the scientific community, has a profound interest in what makes up the costs for publishing.

We at EMBO and EMBO Press are therefore making our journals’ finances public to provide transparency and clarity about the costs of publishing articles. All numbers shown below are for the year 2017, for which all transactions are complete."