The journal is open access and free to read. Publication is funded on the author side by an Article Processing Charge (APC), payable only on acceptance. There is no submission fee, and fee waivers are need-blind. Good, reproducible science must never fail because someone cannot pay.
The APC is CHF 1,500 (≈ US$1,845), payable only when a paper is accepted. Prices are set and charged in Swiss francs (the publisher is Swiss), and the dollar figure is indicative, following the exchange rate. Each FAIR Press Journals title sets its own APC and this is the figure for this one. What differs between titles is the market each publishes into — health-science open-access charges commonly run well above this figure. The service stays the same everywhere in the imprint, so the review, the verification and the production described below are identical across titles. Submitting, review and the decision are free.
While the journal is starting up, the APC is waived in full for its founding articles. The decision on those papers is made and signed exactly as on every other. The waiver plays no part in it.
What the APC pays for
The APC pays for the work behind a published article. That is the reproducibility-verifying review with detailed, constructive feedback, production in HTML and archival formats, DOI registration, hosting, and long-term preservation of the article together with its reproducibility package. The editorial decision is made and signed before payment is ever discussed.
Who publishes the journal
FAIR Press Journals is an independent publisher, run by its founding editors as a Swiss company, FAIR Press Journals GmbH in Olten. It is not a charity and not part of a larger group.
Decision integrity
- The editorial decision is made without regard to payment or ability to pay. The deciding editor does not see payment or waiver status and is not rewarded per acceptance.
- Said plainly. This journal's editor is one of the imprint's two founders, so he has an indirect interest in the imprint's income and we will not pretend otherwise. That is exactly why the safeguards are structural instead of a claim of disinterest. There is no payment or waiver status in front of the deciding editor, no reward per acceptance, decision counts published as they accumulate, every decision signed by name and auditable, and free appeals decided by the founder who did not sign (see complaints & appeals).
- Editors do not publish their own research in the journal they edit. An editor of another FAIR Press Journals title who submits to this journal is treated as any other author and takes no part in any decision about their own submission (see the ethics policy). This journal has one editor, so where no uninvolved editor can handle a submission we decline it and say so, rather than letting someone with a stake in it decide.
- We publish our process openly. Decision counts, acceptance rates and decision times go on the journal page as real numbers with their as-of date, once there are decisions to count. Until then the page shows no figures at all rather than a projection.
Need-blind waivers
- Hardship waivers (full or partial) for any unfunded author or student, on request, need-blind and non-bureaucratic. A short note is enough.
- Waivers are requested at submission and decided independently of the scientific decision. Waiver status is never visible to the deciding editor. Granted waivers are reported in aggregate.
Optional feedback report on rejected submissions
Every rejection letter develops one decisive issue in depth, for free. Authors of rejected submissions can additionally purchase the full assessment report as optional feedback (see the peer-review policy). Three hard rules govern it. The report is strictly optional, it never changes the decision, and it is not offered where the rejection is for integrity reasons. Appeals are always free. The full report costs CHF 100 (≈ US$123), the same price whether the rejection came at the desk or after full review.
Refunds and billing
Institutional invoicing is supported, and invoices are issued at acceptance with a 30-day payment term. Publication never waits for payment. An accepted article proceeds to production and publishes on its normal schedule while the invoice is settled. If an article is withdrawn or retracted due to a journal error, the APC is refunded. The optional privacy-preserving data service (see data & code availability) is priced separately and billed only when an author opts in. Its pricing will likewise be published before the service accepts engagements.