how much do research papers cost

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• PMC8276192.1 ; 2021 Jan 12
• ➤ PMC8276192.2; 2021 Jul 1

Current market rates for scholarly publishing services

Alexander grossmann.

1 Fakultät Informatik und Medien, HTWK Leipzig, Leipzig, Sachsen, 04277, Germany

Björn Brembs

2 Institut für Zoologie - Neurogenetik, Universität Regensburg, Regensburg, Bavaria, 93053, Germany

Associated Data

Underlying data.

Figshare: Journal_Production_Cost_010519.xlsx. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8118197.v2 60 .

This project contains the data used to calculate production costs for articles.

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).

Version Changes

Revised. amendments from version 1.

In this version, we have used the feedback from the reviewers to improve the description of our methods and different wordings throughout the text. Specifically, we have described the publishing process in more generic terms and described the similarities and differences between the different publishing scenarios in more detail. We also updated the spreadsheet containing our raw data to reflect these new wordings.

Peer Review Summary

For decades, the supra-inflation increase of subscription prices for scholarly journals has concerned scholarly institutions. After years of fruitless efforts to solve this “serials crisis”, open access has been proposed as the latest potential solution. However, also the prices for open access publishing are high and are rising well beyond inflation. What has been missing from the public discussion so far is a quantitative approach to determine the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article using state-of-the-art technologies, such that informed decisions can be made as to appropriate price levels. Here we provide a granular, step-by-step calculation of the costs associated with publishing primary research articles, from submission, through peer-review, to publication, indexing and archiving. We find that these costs range from less than US$200 per article in modern, large scale publishing platforms using post-publication peer-review, to about US$1,000 per article in prestigious journals with rejection rates exceeding 90%. The publication costs for a representative scholarly article today come to lie at around US$400. These results appear uncontroversial as they not only match previous data using different methodologies, but also conform to the costs that many publishers have openly or privately shared. We discuss the numerous additional non-publication items that make up the difference between these publication costs and final price at the more expensive, legacy publishers.

Introduction

The affordability problem of scholarly publishing, i.e., the supra-inflationary price increases with stagnating library budgets, has been a hot topic for more than three decades (see, e.g., 1 – 8 ). In recent years, perhaps precipitated by some so-called ‘gold’ open access (OA) journals requiring payments in the form of article-processing charges (APCs; fees for authors or their institutions upon acceptance for publishing an article and making it openly available), the average cost of an article has emerged as a useful measure with which to compare different business models (but see 9 for a critique). However, most authors refer to the prices charged by the publisher, not the actual cost to the publisher (e.g., 10 – 13 ). One consequence of this mis-attribution is a potential overestimation of the actual costs of scholarly publishing due to the inclusion of the business models and pricing strategies of publishers into the calculation. To close this gap, here we provide a bottom-up calculation of the cost of efforts and services which are required to achieve a certain service level in order to publish an academic journal article. These calculations are analogous to what a new publisher would have to calculate before entering the publishing market. We compare our cost calculations with the current pricing schemes of publishers.

In this article, we assume the role of a newcomer to the academic publishing market and list the various steps and procedures for a representative publishing workflow according to current industry standards. Each step incurs a cost which can be determined by analyzing the market rates for each service or procedure. These costs comprise the direct costs. We also add several indirect (or fixed) cost items which do not accrue on a per article basis. The final per-article costs are then specified as a range depending on the number of articles published and the service level desired. These ranges denote current market rates at which customers can obtain publishing services.

Methodology

To arrive at a meaningful figure denoting how much the publication of an article costs on average, it is necessary to arrive at the exact cost for each step in the processing workflow of a manuscript being submitted for publication. These direct or variable costs then have to be combined with the indirect or fixed costs of operating a publishing enterprise, such as staff costs, real estate, insurance and energy costs, etc. The former requires granular insight and expertise about the different service levels for the entire publishing workflow. The latter is commonly calculated as staff overhead. In this work, we have therefore calculated the cost for each step in the standard publication workflow under consideration of both fixed and variable costs. Both external and internal expenses have been taken into account as well as overhead costs to cover fixed non-direct company costs of the publishing venture.

Direct or variable costs

There are three main areas in which production steps have to be considered: content acquisition, content preparation (production) and content dissemination/archiving. Importantly, ‘content acquisition’ does not imply active acquisition of authors and/or manuscripts.

• a. Online submission system
• b. Searching and assigning reviewers
• c. Communication with reviewers
• d. Communication with authors
• e. Handling of re-submission process
• f. Plagiarism check
• g. Similarity Check (CrossRef)
• h. DOI for article (CrossRef)
• i. DOI for 2 or more reviews (CrossRef)
• j. APC collection
• a. Manuscript tracking system
• b. Production system check-in
• c. Technical checking of manuscript
• d. Copyediting
• e. Typesetting
• f. Formatting figures/graphs/tables
• g. Altmetric badge
• h. XML and metadata preparation
• i. Handling author corrections
• a. Web OA platform and hosting
• b. Long-term digital preservation (CLOCKSS/Portico, etc.)
• c. Distribution to indexing services (Scopus, PMC, DOAJ, etc.)

Pricing figures have been deducted by openly available price lists of vendors, as for example for Scholastica, Akron Aps, CrossRef, CLOCKSS (see Table 1 , Table 2 ). In all other cases where pricing list or fees were not openly available on the web, prices were indicated after a direct request for proposal or communicated privately. For the latter we have checked with other partners to validate that information. Some service vendors have not split their services in a granular manner but offer a full service for more steps of the publishing workflow. In those cases, we have tried to split those costs or consider the full cost as part of one of the scenarios (see below) which cover the complete manuscript acquisition and article production process.

Expenses and fees for each individual service have been arrived at from two main sources. Some standard services have been taken from openly available price lists ( Table 1 ).

Second, we requested quotes from vendors without publicly available fees, or turned to other sources 14 . For services such as manuscript submission and peer review management systems we considered vendors such as Manuscript Central (Clarivate) and Editorial Manager (ARIES).

Other costs such as internal staff costs (including overhead, EU/US standard) were estimated taking into account not only current market costs we have requested ourselves, but also numbers from major publishing houses (MDPI, Wiley, Springer, DeGruyter, Frontiers, Ubiquity, SciELO, Open LIbrary of the Humanities). While some of these publishers have made their costs public ( Table 2 ), others have either provided their numbers under the condition of confidentiality or the numbers were gained from internal sources.

For certain tasks, for example copyediting or typesetting, there are hundreds of individual companies worldwide providing those services on a industry-standard level. In our quote requests, we have considered only those with which we have collaborated in real business life so far or from which we know the performance and service level in detail from co-operations over two decades. Having compared the pricing of those service providers with others, we found only a very small variation of cost for such tasks, which justifies our practical approach. It was never our ambition to perform an exhaustive but always incomplete market study of service providers worldwide, but an attempt to provide an authoritative documentation of approximate current publishing costs as a valuable information tool for decision-makers and other stakeholders in policy drafting, contract negotiations or public discourse.

Indirect or fixed costs

The calculation of per-article figures from costs that do not accrue on a per-article basis (e.g., salaries, annual fees, etc.) was based on the following assumptions: (i) The average STM article contains 12 printed pages 13 , with 1500 words on each page (i.e., 18,000 words total). (ii) We estimated an average STM article to contain 10 non-text items such as figures or tables. (iii) We also assumed an average rejection rate of 50% after conventional (pre-publication) peer-review with at least two reports and ten contact requests to secure one reviewer. (iv) We assume a desk-rejection rate of 10% after editorial review. (v) We also base our staff costs on the granular work load per article and not on full-time equivalents (FTE). These assumptions entail that all editorial duties (on average 7.5 person-hours per submitted manuscript) are handled by in-house staff and none by academic editors, while peer-review is still performed by volunteer academics. In this way, staff costs, including overhead expenses, are calculated on a per-article basis (i.e., per published article, not per submitted manuscript). Salary costs are based on industry standards in more economically developed countries for the different editorial tasks. Overhead expenses can vary significantly depending on the profit and loss structure of the publisher and include rent, repairs, depreciation, interest, insurance, travel expenditures, labor burden, telephone bills, supplies, taxes, accounting fees, etc. We have estimated an average 33% overhead on top of salary costs. The following publication tasks are commonly covered by annual (membership) fees plus an initial, one-time set-up or installment fee: Web OA platform and hosting, CLOCKSS/Portico, DOAJ, Altmetric Badge and Crossref. Because these costs accrue regardless of how many articles are published (i.e., fixed costs), we have calculated per-article costs for journals with different numbers of articles published per year. All of these assumptions have been made with the overarching goal to ensure upper-bound costs. For each of these cost items, there exist numerous ways in which their contributions to overall costs can be reduced. Thus, the figures we provide here describe an upper cost ceiling that many publishers will easily fall below.

While some general fixed costs are covered by salary overheads (see above), we deliberately chose to not include certain fixed costs: Cost of sales have not been considered because for open access journals no longer sales representatives are required which have to negotiate renewals of subscriptions with libraries on an annual basis. We also excluded management costs as these are highly variable and in large publishers with many journals (and hence articles), per article costs of management are often negligible. We realize that this may be different for publishers which publish low-volume journals but with nevertheless highly paid executives (see Discussion). Because making an article public (i.e., ‘publishing’) is distinct from locking it behind a paywall, we have also not calculated the often very significant paywall costs. While innovation (or acquisition of innovative technologies) as well as branding and advertising/marketing are crucial for a company to succeed and thrive in a market in the long term, we have also not included these costs as they are not directly related to publishing scholarly articles. Such costs would include conference attendance, advertisement in print, online, social media and search platforms, as well as search engine optimization (SEO). Similarly, government relations (lobbying) may be considered a necessary expense for any business, but as it does not directly relate to the process of publishing academic papers, we did not include these costs in our calculations either. However, we do discuss the probable extent to which these non-publication costs may affect pricing.

The motivation for the above assumptions was to combine a robust cost calculation (i.e., sourced from measurable time efforts and industry-standard salaries) with an upper bound cost calculation which would come to lie above most academic-run journals. However, the journal landscape is diverse and journals can be run on a shoestring budget, supported exclusively by volunteer labor and institutional resources, or by multi-billion dollar publicly traded corporations with professional in-house staff handling every individual step. In an attempt to reflect this heterogeneity, we divided our cost calculations into three broad categories, each with two sub-categories for a total of six scenarios ( Table 3 ).

PPPR - post publication peer-review (i.e., no rejections after peer-review). OJS - Open Journal System

The first two scenarios A and B correspond to professionally run journals where salaried in-house staff handle each manuscript and only peer-reviewers provide volunteer labor. These correspond to traditional commercial journal publishing scenarios. Scenario A differs from Scenario B in that the individual production steps are not sourced from a variety of generic publishing service providers, each specializing in their particular publishing step, but from a full-service provider specialized in scholarly publishing, providing most of the publication services listed above, from a single source. In our example, we have chosen a service provider which is representative for this sector and with considerable name recognition, Scholastica, as such a specialized, full-service provider. Selecting a single, specialized provider is more convenient and requires less expertise than multiple generic providers, as a single contract replaces sourcing and contracting of multiple partners. However, such convenience commonly comes with an additional cost. Scenario A corresponds, e.g., to those society or university-run journals with salaried editors, while many corporate publishers run their journals according to Scenario B. The third scenario takes into account that many scholarly journals are operating with minimal budgets by not paying their editors at all, using institutional servers, for instance with the free, open source Open Journal System handling submission and peer-review, with little space for long-term preservation or indexing. Of course, their institution covers server costs for these journals, but with servers being shared and provided centrally already, per-article costs approach zero. This aspect is analogous to the salaries of the volunteer editors being paid for by their institutions, irrespective of how many hours of editorial work are being volunteered. At first approximation, Scenario A is likely to be the most expensive option, all else being equal, with Scenario B expected to come to lie between Scenario A and the least costly Scenario C.

We calculated an additional sub-category for each scenario to better cover the scholarly diversity. For Scenario A and B we also considered an additional scenario where costs would be reduced by post-publication peer-review as it is practiced by journals like, e.g., F1000Research. In these scenarios, submitted manuscripts are published immediately and peer-review then merely creates additional versions, such that there are no more rejections after editorial review. Journals in Scenario C are often operated by individuals whose primary specialization is not scholarly publishing. Therefore, a provider that bundles the different publishing steps may be more expensive but enticing due to the convenience it offers. Therefore, we also calculated the costs for articles in such scholar-led journals, but with Scholastica replacing the generic service providers.

All costs are calculated per published article, i.e., a journal that publishes 1,000 articles per year has received 2,000 articles if their rejection rate is 50%. Our costs are calculated for the 1,000 published articles, not for the 2,000 submissions the journal has received. For each of the six scenarios, we have also calculated the same costs, but assuming a 90% rejection rate (see raw data file). As fixed costs are distributed over all published articles, article volume per year is another factor we considered. Our calculations yielded a lower bound of 100 articles per year (see results), below which it becomes difficult to operate a journal with in-house staff. Beyond 1,000 articles per year, indirect costs per article shrink to a negligible fraction. We thus calculated per-article costs for each scenario for journals with 100 articles per year and for 1000 articles per year, for a grand total of 24 different cost estimates. The results for the 12 cases that represent the more common journals with an average rejection rate of 50% are depicted in Table 4 .

The scenarios are labeled with A, A2, B, B2, C, C2 (see Table 3 ). Values correspond to an average 50% rejection rate, 90% rejection rate calculations in the text.

Finally, we also considered a seventh scenario which we did not list with the other six: a decentralized, federated platform solution where all scholarly articles are published without being divided into journals. Such a solution is not currently in widespread use, is not based on journals and thus remains, so far, largely hypothetical. While, e.g., Open Research Central may someday evolve into such a “Global Open Archive” as these solutions were called in 2010 15 , at the present time this is still a hypothetical scenario, despite repeated calls for such a platform since then 16 – 20 . With such a modern, decentralized, federated platform providing publishing functionalities without journals (see, e.g., 21 for details), some of the publishing steps listed above become obsolete, while others remain relevant. Steps that may become obsolete include DOIs, long-term archiving such as CLOCKSS or Portico, indices such as Scopus. Relevant steps remaining are typesetting/copyediting, XML preparation, format conversion, plagiarism checks.

An earlier version of this article, with more price information and discussion can be found on PeerJ 22 .

All the data we have based our calculations on are available at Figshare (DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.8118197.v2 ).

One of the first findings of our calculations is that in order to employ at least one 50% FTE of an in-house editor, a journal has to publish approx. 100 articles per year or more. Hence, in the following, we will base our figures on journals publishing at least 100 articles per year (corresponding to 50% FTE) or 1,000 articles (corresponding to 5 FTEs), to show the spread of fixed and indirect costs over the number of articles published.

Our calculation of per-article publishing costs in a conventional pre-publication peer-review (50% rejection rate) scenario where all editorial duties are performed by in-house staff (Scenario B) ranges from US$643.61 for a journal that publishes 100 articles per year down to US$565.15 for such a journal that publishes 1,000 articles (or more, as the indirect costs become increasingly negligible around this value). These values consist of US$266.53 direct publishing costs (i.e., Similarity Check, DOI for an article, DOIs for two or more reviews, copyediting, typesetting, formatting figures/graphs/tables, Altmetric badge, indexing, XML and metadata preparation), US$ 289.91 for editorial staff and US$8.72 to US$87.18 for 1,000 to 100 articles, respectively, in indirect costs (i.e., Web OA platform and hosting, digital preservation, memberships).

These numbers were calculated using generic, full-service providers (based in India), where applicable. There are open access service providers that provide packaged deals for the same services as these generic service providers. We have calculated the same steps using a well-known provider in this area, representative for this class of service providers, Scholastica (Scenario A). Not unexpectedly, these figures are slightly higher: US$ 374.08 for direct publishing costs and US$5.92 to US$59.18 for 1,000 to 100 articles, respectively, for indirect costs (editorial staff costs remain the same).

While these costs have been calculated for a generic journal with 50% rejection rate, per-article costs will increase with increased rejection rates and decrease with less rejections as in, e.g., a post-publication peer-review (PPPR) model. In a journal that uses generic service providers and publishes all submitted manuscripts as PDF preprints with a DOI before performing otherwise identical peer-review as described above (i.e., PPPR with in-house editors and volunteer reviewers), per article editorial services drop from US$289.91 to US$140.69 (Scenario A2/B2), with all other costs remaining nearly identical. Conversely, prestigious journals with rejection rates of around 90% see their costs rise to US$1053.87 for 100 articles per year or US$770.53 for the larger journals with about 1,000 articles per year (generic service providers).

These numbers also show that for a conventional journal today, where academics perform their editorial duties on a volunteer basis (i.e., Scenario B, but no editorial costs as editor salaries are paid for by their academic institutions), direct publication costs come to lie at US$266.53 with generic service providers and total costs depend on the scale at which the journal operates. Small journals with 100 articles would face average per article total publication costs of US$353.71, while journals with 1,000 or more articles would only face costs of US$275.25 or less per published article. Even at the highest convenience for a small, volunteer-run journal, costs come to lie at US$454.63 where a full-service provider (Scholastica) handles all of the technical aspects of the work (Scenario C2).

The above calculations (summarized in Table 4 ) demonstrate economies of scale. The more articles are being published, the lower the costs for each article, approaching the fixed costs for each article.

Because of the economies of scale and recent calls for the replacement of journals with a modern publishing platform 15 – 20 , we have also calculated the cost of publishing the annual output of the STM community, approx. 3 million articles, on such a platform that facilitates PPPR organized by academic editors on a single, decentralized, federated platform running modern software solutions (a “Global Open Archive” 15 or “Next Generation Repository” 21 , such as, e.g., Open Research Central or equivalent). Such a platform would dispense with several production steps which are necessitated by the current balkanization of the literature in different journals published by different publishers, but keep others (see Methodology). In this scenario, the indirect and fixed costs per article approach zero due to the high number of published articles (but see Discussion), such that the only remaining costs would be the direct publishing costs of US$190.17 per published article.

Finally, taking a ballpark cost figure of US$600 for a scholarly article with full editorial services (i.e., scenario A/B) and comparing it to the low end of the average price estimate for a subscription article of about US$4,000 10 – 13 , 22 , 23 , it becomes clear that publication costs only cover 15% of the subscription price ( Figure 1 ). Assuming a conservative profit margin of 30% (i.e., US$1,200 per article) for one of the large publishers 24 – 27 , there remains a sizeable gap of about US$2,200 in non-publication costs, or 55% of the price of a scholarly subscription article ( Figure 1 ).

Assuming the commonly accepted US$4,000 price tag for a subscription article, published profit margins of 30% and our calculation of about US$600 in publication costs for a full-service subscription article (scenario A/B, see Table 4 ), there remain US$2,200 in non-publication costs per article.

Since the 1990s, it has been recognized that the prices of scholarly journals were escalating at unsustainable rates 3 . In the last 30 years, this “serials crisis” has never been coherently addressed, let alone solved. With this work, we aim to provide more financial evidence for future evidence-based policies addressing the affordability problem of scholarly communication 1 , 2 .

Prices and Costs

Not only current discussions are addressing the affordability problem in the unit of cost per article 10 – 13 , 23 , 28 – 30 and we follow this precedent. Drawing from publicly available price lists and industry-standard service costs, we find that publishing costs per article vary from US$194.89 to US$723.16, depending on the level of service and publishing volume ( Table 4 ). It is important to emphasize that these are conservative calculations, likely to constitute upper bounds, where innovation and changes in practice can be expected to decrease costs. For instance, our assumptions of an average article containing 12 printed pages (or 18,000 words) and 10 figures or tables is likely a substantial overestimate (especially given that pages with a figure or table must have much fewer than 1,500 words). Moreover, we used US/EU salary levels in our calculations. In countries with lower salaries, labor costs will be correspondingly lower.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the convenience of outsourcing the main publishing services to a specialized full-service provider comes with a small increase in cost (Scenario A vs. Scenario B), when compared to an itemized sourcing of publishing services. In our cost calculation, we have not factored in the management cost of sourcing the itemized services, as we have not included company management in our calculations. Any decision between these two options will thus have to be made after factoring in such costs as well.

Even in the rare, most expensive case, these costs compare very favorably both to the current subscription pricing of around US$4,000-5,000 10 – 13 , 22 , 23 and current APCs (US$1,400-2,200) 11 , 28 – 32 . See 22 for a discussion on subscription and APC pricing. Our highest value encompasses conventional, journal-based pre-publication peer-review with a generic 50% rejection rate at a small journal (~100 articles per year) where all management of peer-review is performed by in-house editorial staff with no volunteer academic editors. Our data suggest that increasing only the rejection rate, for example from 50% to 90%, leads to an increase in publication costs of around 30–40% (e.g., in scenario B from US$565.15 to US$770.53 for 1,000 article journals or from US$643.61 to US$1,053.87 for 100 article journals). Apparently, this is a consequence of the respective increase of direct personnel expenses for managing the peer review process and communicating with both reviewers and authors for classical pre-publication peer review. As currently most highly selective journals publish on the order of 800–900 research articles per year about US$1,000 per article can be seen as an upper bound of total publication costs at such journals.

On the other end of the spectrum are small journals that are run mainly on volunteer efforts. Even in cases where these journals use specialized full-service providers such as Scholastica, there are numerous ways to reduce per-article costs to below the US$100 mark. For instance, specializing in rapid dissemination of short articles reduces per-article costs at the Journal “Findings” to below US$100 33 , when the journal in all other aspects but article length follows our low-volume Scenario C2. Such numbers also highlight one of the problematic aspects of using per-article costs, averaged over a highly diverse publishing landscape.

Market rates for publishing services

The workflow we model consists of verifiable, modular components, available to any entity with the desire to enter the academic publishing world. Numerous publishers are already on the record to operate at similar costs to the ones we have calculated. These publishers include, but are not limited to SciELO, Pensoft/arpha, Open Library of the Humanities, Ubiquity, PeerJ or Scholastica. Our data confirm that at prices of around US$500 per article, these providers stand to arrive at around a 10% profit margin. Further corroborating these calculations, the 2018 STM report cites survey-based data that arrive at only slightly higher average costs than our calculation (US$420-650, excluding overhead, i.e., about US$560-870 with overhead) 13 . Our calculations also fall in the same range as other methodologies 34 .

Our calculations also show that with publishing volumes exceeding 1,000 articles per year, fixed costs shrink below 1% of the direct article costs and become negligible. This was expected and already concluded in a previous analysis 35 . These insights are important for designing a transition towards a scholarly publishing platform instead of journals 15 – 21 .

Due to the limited possibility in dividing labor contracts into arbitrarily small portions, we find that journals with volumes below approx. 100 articles per year would be best served financially if they operated on the concept of volunteer academic editors handling the peer-review, instead of in-house staff.

In conclusion, given the congruence of the available data and the publicly available prices for the services required, the market rate ranges for publication services we arrive at here do not appear controversial. Perhaps more controversial is the number and amount of non-publication costs a scholarly article, funded by the taxpayer, ought to accrue.

Non-publication costs

If the lowest publication costs for journals with volunteer editors constituted merely 5–10% of current subscription prices and publicly reported publisher profits only amount to an additional 30–40%, which non-publication costs are publishers currently facing and taxpayers paying for? While these costs are opaque and variable between publishers and, indeed, between journals, some estimates can be made from publicly available data. If one assumes revenue of about US$4,000 per subscription article (i.e., on the low end of the converging estimates), a conservative 30% profit margin (i.e., US$1,200 per article) for one of the large publishers 24 – 27 and generous publication costs of US$600 per article (scenario A/B; table 4 ), then there remains a sizeable gap of about US$2,200 in non-publication costs per article - more than the sum of publication costs and profits combined, or 55% of the subscription cost of a scholarly article ( Figure 1 ). While some of these costs may be considered necessary for any business, none of them are associated with publishing primary research articles (see Methods).

Running a business: Management. While our cost calculations include generic running costs such as rent, repairs, depreciation, interest, insurance, travel expenditures, labor burden, telephone bills, supplies, taxes, accounting fees, etc., we have explicitly omitted some indirect costs such as management cost and paywalls. For instance, according to their 2016 tax statement, the New England Journal of Medicine spends 4% of its publication revenue on their top ten management staff alone (which would translate to about US$160 per article if applied to our example above; Figure 1 ).

Preventing access: Paywalls. Subscription journals also face costs associated with paywalls. It’s difficult to estimate the cost of such technology for publishers, but the cost of a new paywall for the New York Times was reported to lie between US$25-50 million 36 , 37 . Alternatively, as the functional distinction between subscription articles and OA articles is precisely the missing paywall in OA articles, one could also assume that publishers arrive at their current APC pricing of around US$2,000 by subtracting paywall costs from their subscription price. This assumption would entail paywall costs of approx. US$2,000 per article (i.e., the difference between APC and subscription pricing).

On top of the technical costs of a paywall, one may also consider the legal fees for defending paywalls for this cost item. Publishers have a track record of litigation with regard to articles outside of their paywalls and regularly seek damages in court for actual or perceived threats to their subscription business model 38 – 44 . These costs accrue by seeking to enclose the scholarly literature within the paywalls of publishers via alternative routes in addition to the digital paywalls.

News, advertising, sales, marketing, public relations: branding. Another cost item is publishing non-research content. For instance, for 2017, PubMed lists a total of 1,595 articles published by the Lancet, while Clarivate Analytics only counts 302 articles for their Impact Factor. Assuming that only the latter articles amount to primary research publications, this journal’s revenue also pays for 1,293 non-research articles. Similar numbers also hold for other prestigious journals (e.g.: Nature: 837/2469, Science: 769/2629, New England Journal of Medicine: 327/1449; research/total), often with their own journalist and editorial staff commissioning articles and/or reporting themselves on research and policy news. However, the number of journals where this can constitute a significant fraction of their total costs is presumably small, likely restricted to the most prestigious journals.

Prestigious journals also often practice active author or materials acquisition, by traveling to conferences and laboratories, building networks in a strategy to entice the next exciting research finding to be published in their journals. Active author acquisition accrues costs both in terms of travel and time spent networking and communicating with authors that is not covered in our cost calculations (see Methods).

Sometimes, new journals also need to engage in such author acquisition practices, which, perhaps, can be best subsumed under general marketing or public relations costs required for building and maintaining a brand. These marketing costs also include, e.g., advertising in various venues targeting both authors and subscribers. For many publishers it is also common to promote their brand at conferences and institutions with, e.g., hosted speakers, travel grants or sponsored awards.

Because of the complex, time-consuming negotiations with libraries on ever tighter budgets due to the supra-inflationary subscription price increases, publishers also need to employ expert sales teams. The task of these sales teams is not only to find the most irresistible way to package and bundle subscription journals and/or databases, but also to device the most inexorable psychological strategy for their negotiations with librarians. These sales teams need to operate in close connections with the various advertising, marketing and public relations teams of the publisher to accomplish a coherent brand image. One may argue that in times of OA, these sales costs are not necessary expenses any more and more associated with paywall costs than with publication costs. On the other hand, in an OA world, one may argue that branding was never more important for author acquisition.

New technologies: innovation and acquisitions. Publishers also need to invest in innovation, in order to stay current with their technologies and functionalities. While scholarly publishers have been quick to transition from print to web-based technologies in the past, the digital functionalities of most of the scholarly literature today lag at least a decade behind current functionalities of other digital objects outside of the scholarly literature. The level of investment in innovation thus remains unclear and its effects questionable. Instead of investments into their own technological innovation, publishers today appear to acquire companies that have invented desired functionalities around the scholarly workflow, with the goal to provide services beyond publications 45 – 48 .

Government relations: Lobbying. Most international publishers, as any other corporation, also spend significant amounts of money on government relations (i.e., lobbying). Some of these corporations employ staff at the vice president level not only in the most important research nations, but also at the level of supra-national bodies such as the European Commission 49 . These staff, in turn, employ assistants and other members of their teams. Obviously, the task of these employees is to protect current revenue streams, e.g., subscription or APC income. For instance, one publisher, Elsevier, spends more than 400,000€ per year on lobbying at the level of the European Commission alone 50 . The consequences of such efforts have been observable, e.g., in the so-called “Finch Report” in the UK 51 , which surprised many commentators with its publisher-friendly recommendations ( 49 ,see, e.g., 52 ).

Which non-publication costs should remain bundled up with publishing? Regardless of all of these estimates necessarily remaining vague and imprecise, the fact remains that the scholarly community must eventually make a number of decisions, if it is to tackle the affordability problem. Which of the above non-publication costs should remain bundled up with the process of publishing scholarly research articles? Which of these costs are avoidable, which necessary and which even desirable? Are profit margins of 30–40% on taxpayer funds tolerable?

In fact, one may even ask which of the services we list as part of the scholarly publishing standard are actually necessary for scholarly publishing. After all, journals such as the Journal of Machine Learning Research, Discrete Analysis or the Journal of Open Source Software publish their articles with internal costs below US$10 53 , 54 . Likewise, the preprint archive arXiv publishes their articles at similar costs 55 . Overlay journals 56 – 58 take advantage of the preprint infrastructure to reduce costs much below the ones we have calculated here. A competitive market where service providers compete with their services and where price pressure forces market participants to consider internal production costs, unlike the current publisher monopolies, would facilitate such decision-making 22 , 59 .

Data availability

Acknowledgments.

We are indebted to Michael Dowling, Jon Tennant, Isabell Welpe, Bernhard Mittermeier and Pete Binfield for critically reading and commenting on earlier versions of this document. We are also grateful to Abel Packer from SciELO and Brian Cody from Scholastica for privately sharing cost data from their organizations with us.

[version 2; peer review: 2 approved]

Funding Statement

The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.

Reviewer response for version 2

Pandelis perakakis.

1 Open Scholar CIC, Birmingham, UK

2 Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

All initial concerns and recommendations were addressed in the revised version of the manuscript.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable

Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Reviewer Expertise:

Scholarly communication, Open peer review

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Lisa Rose-Wiles

1 Seton Hall University Libraries, Seton Hall University, South Orange, USA

Library science, information literacy, citation analyses, circulation and journal/book pricing analyses.

Reviewer response for version 1

I concur that the “supra-inflation increase of subscription prices for scholarly journals” is a critical issue, especially for academic libraries, and that this is a valuable contribution to the literature.

I also concur with the previous reviewer that the “scenarios” and tables could be better explained and organized for greater clarity. Also further indicators of variance would be helpful - for example, there are surely significant differences (especially in “fixed or indirect costs”) based on geographic location. I also find myself wondering which (if any) of the costs to publishers are tax deductible, which would effectively increase the profit margin.

While the main focus of the manuscript is the cost of producing articles, to place this in broader perspective It would be helpful to clarify more explicitly that there are two major price components to journal articles: (1) Journal subscription costs, which are typically borne by libraries (although no doubt some researchers still subscribe to their favorite journals themselves), and (2) article-processing charges (APC’s) which are in principle an open-access alternative to subscriptions, but in practice often simply shift the cost from an institution’s library to its faculty, research office and/or some other institutionally-funded entity. Both contribute directly or indirectly to the high price of student tuition and the chronic under-funding of many academic libraries, but subscription prices seem to be the greater issue since the average “per article price” (see below) is considerably higher. 

For readers not necessarily familiar with the various journal pricing models, the authors might note that both journal prices and APC’s vary enormously by discipline, especially STEM vs. humanities, and that the practice of “Big Deal” bundling (especially by large commercial publishers) can make it very difficult for librarians to disentangle the actual subscription cost per journal. It would be helpful to include some discussion and more explicit data on the widely varying range of APC’s, which, in my experience, seem independent of actual subscription costs. I am more familiar with the pricing models for STEM journals (typically > US $2,500 APC regardless of journal subscription price), but it is my impression that when humanities journals do charge authors, the fee is much lower. This would be an interesting topic to explore in a follow-up article. Granted that STEM articles typically include multiple tables and figures that are costly to produce, but is the price differential really as substantial as the differences in subscription costs or APC’s?

In the final paragraph of the results (p.6) and in Figure 1, the authors compare the article cost with “the average price estimate for a subscription article of about US$4,000”. Where did this figure come from and what is it based on? Is this an across the board “per library” average, in which case the wide variation in prices paid by different libraries (at least in the US) is surely another confounding factor. Again, there should be some discussion of the vast difference in pricing among disciplines, or if this is based on STEM journals as I suspect, that should be clarified. Also the average APC price should be included in the comparison; it is interesting that it appears to be considerably less than the quoted US$4,000 subscription “per article” cost. This brings up a further question for the future: in hybrid journals, does charging APC’s result in lower subscription prices, or are APC’s effectively layered on top of subscription prices?

Another point that is only tangentially referenced (e.g. “volunteer academic editors”) is that many of the costs associated with publishing are actually borne by the institution and its academic faculty, who not only produce the scholarship but also review articles and often act as editors as well. This labor is typically unpaid. “Volunteer academic editors” in well-funded institutions may receive some form of course release, additional office space and/or clerical support, but again (see first paragraph) these costs are borne by the institution and to some degree passed on to its students; they are not borne by the publishers. Of course this point has been made many times before, but since the authors are discussing various costs involved in publication it is worth noting again.

As a final comment, it would be informative to have responses from publishers, especially small “non-profit” or “not-for-profit” publishers on this publication.

Very thought provoking!

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

Institute of Zoology - Neurogenetics, Universität Regensburg, Germany

Response to Reviewer #2: Lisa Rose-Wiles:

I also concur with the previous reviewer that the “scenarios” and tables could be better explained and organized for greater clarity.

We thank both reviewers for their suggestions and are confident to have now adequately addressed this very valid concern in the new, revised version of the manuscript.

Also further indicators of variance would be helpful - for example, there are surely significant differences (especially in “fixed or indirect costs”) based on geographic location. I also find myself wondering which (if any) of the costs to publishers are tax deductible, which would effectively increase the profit margin.

We have now further emphasized that our salary calculations are based on western (i.e., US/EU) industry standards and that countries with lower salary levels would hence face lower costs. This is to arrive at upper bound figures, describing the costliest way of publishing, from which one can always find ways to reduce costs. We have further emphasized this approach also at the very beginning of the Discussion section now.

While the main focus of the manuscript is the cost of producing articles, to place this in broader perspective It would be helpful to clarify more explicitly that there are two major price components to journal articles: (1) Journal subscription costs, which are typically borne by libraries (although no doubt some researchers still subscribe to their favorite journals themselves), and (2) article-processing charges (APC's) which are in principle an open-access alternative to subscriptions, but in practice often simply shift the cost from an institution's library to its faculty, research office and/or some other institutionally-funded entity. Both contribute directly or indirectly to the high price of student tuition and the chronic under-funding of many academic libraries, but subscription prices seem to be the greater issue since the average “per article price” (see below) is considerably higher.

For readers not necessarily familiar with the various journal pricing models, the authors might note that both journal prices and APC's vary enormously by discipline, especially STEM vs. humanities, and that the practice of “Big Deal” bundling (especially by large commercial publishers) can make it very difficult for librarians to disentangle the actual subscription cost per journal. It would be helpful to include some discussion and more explicit data on the widely varying range of APC's, which, in my experience, seem independent of actual subscription costs. I am more familiar with the pricing models for STEM journals (typically > US $2,500 APC regardless of journal subscription price), but it is my impression that when humanities journals do charge authors, the fee is much lower. This would be an interesting topic to explore in a follow-up article. Granted that STEM articles typically include multiple tables and figures that are costly to produce, but is the price differential really as substantial as the differences in subscription costs or APC's?

We agree with all the arguments here. Therefore, we now more explicitly reference the longer, preprint version of our manuscript, where we not only discuss pricing strategies and business models, as suggested, but also policy options. However, in this more condensed version, we made a conscious effort to focus exclusively on the cost aspect, as we felt the original version was too long, unwieldy and difficult to read as it was covering too many topics at the same time.

In the final paragraph of the results (p.6) and in Figure 1, the authors compare the article cost with “the average price estimate for a subscription article of about US$4,000”. Where did this figure come from and what is it based on? Is this an across the board “per library” average, in which case the wide variation in prices paid by different libraries (at least in the US) is surely another confounding factor.

This explanation was indeed lost as we transitioned from our longer preprint version to this shorter one. We are very grateful for having this pointed out. We now reference the sources of these calculations. The most recent one is very simple: dividing the estimated US$10b in journal revenue by the number of published articles (2m): ~5k. As some other sources mention 4k, we went with the lower bound of these estimates in the literature.

Again, there should be some discussion of the vast difference in pricing among disciplines, or if this is based on STEM journals as I suspect, that should be clarified. Also the average APC price should be included in the comparison; it is interesting that it appears to be considerably less than the quoted US$4,000 subscription “per article” cost. This brings up a further question for the future: in hybrid journals, does charging APC's result in lower subscription prices, or are APC's effectively layered on top of subscription prices?

We now mention the APC price range of US$1,400-2,200 and the 8 references upon which we base this range.

We now make it more explicit what is being paid in terms of salary and which work is being carried out by volunteers. We also explicitly mention the costs covered by institutions (e.g., salaries, servers) and relate them to per-article cost.

We list numerous publishers which are already on the record for publishing in this cost range and cite journals that have much lower costs than our figures. In the acknowledgements, we mention that we have been made privy of internal cost structures to validate and test our figures. As we mention in the article, our numbers match those from other methodologies (e.g. surveys). The preprint version has been available since 2019 and has even received attention in trade organs such as the “Scholarly Kitchen”. In other words, publishers have already vetted our numbers and have had ample opportunity over a number of years to comment on our work and improve it by criticism. Given that our numbers match so well with the available evidence and that our article has received considerable attention from the industry since 2019, perhaps one may interpret the fact that the expensive legacy publishers so far have not publicly commented on these numbers, as evidence that there may not be much left to criticize? Of course, another reason may be that the more expensive publishers may hesitate to draw more attention to the fact that they are so much more expensive. In this case, we would appreciate any suggestions in how we may be able to force these publishers to acknowledge and comment on our calculations. F1000Research allows for comments on the manuscript and perhaps a drive to invite publishers of all ranges to contribute so such a comment may be instructive?

Society publishers, so far, have refrained from public comments other than generally stating that they use publication income to finance society services. We allude to many such and related costs in the “non-publication costs” section of the manuscript.

This article reports a breakdown of article publication costs —from manuscript submission to indexing— for different publication scenarios. There are at least two fundamental reasons why analysing and reporting the realistic cost of publishing a research article is of paramount importance. First, given the exorbitant sums of public money spent to publish the world’s scholarly output it is imperative that we know where exactly this money goes. This information can perhaps mobilise governments, funders, individual scholars, and the general public to demand more sustainable publication models that provide only those essential services that truly add value to scholarly works. Second, a granular account of publishing costs can incentivise more scientific societies and academic groups to abandon their commercial publishers and establish alternative models that better serve the needs of scholarly communication. There is no doubt therefore that this is an extremely valuable report that should be widely disseminated. My review will mainly focus on some recommendations that in my opinion would improve the presentation and utility of the results.

The cost analysis provided in this report is based on a list of 24 services grouped in three distinct categories: content acquisition, preparation, and dissemination. A first minor observation is that in the category of content acquisition, it would probably be more intuitive to list “online submission system” as the first item (before “searching and assigning reviewers”) to match the publication workflow. A second and more important observation is that in this list, and throughout the manuscript, services are sometimes confounded with service providers. Since there are more than one providers for each of the services, I strongly recommend that the list only includes services, whereas in the manuscript different options for each service can be discussed. For example Crossref is not the only option for “DOI registration”, which I believe should be the title of this particular service. Similarly, the service provided by CLOCKSS/LOCKSS/Portico, could be called “long-term digital preservation”. Also, it is not clear what the service provided by OAPEN is, while “upload to Scopus…”, could be called “distribution to indexing services”. Should the authors decide to follow this recommendation I would advise to also modify the accompanying excel file accordingly.

The “Direct or variable costs” subsection in the methods section would be easier to follow if it was structured differently, starting with the list of services and then explaining how pricing information was obtained.

Following the logic that the list of services is the nucleus of the cost analysis, and the report itself, I suggest that table 1 is modified so that the first column displays the services and the second column the providers. Also, it is important that the terms in the services list are used consistently throughout the manuscript. For example, in table 1 we find a service termed “peer review” and another called “peer review management”. It is not clear how these services correspond to the original list. When a service provider offers more than one service in the list, I would recommend to include all of these services in the table. If it is considered convenient to create a new grouping (e.g., peer review management), it should be clear —in the table and in the manuscript— which services from the original list are included in this group (e.g., 1a, 1b, 1c, etc.).

The “scenarios” section should include a more thorough description of the different scenarios, as well as the motivation for selecting each of these scenarios as a separate use case. This description of what each scenario refers to is attempted in the “results” section but in a rather anarchic and hard to follow manner. In the “scenarios” section the authors vaguely mention that these scenarios “...correspond either to existing publishing options or to options that have been discussed in the literature”, but neither are these options clearly delimited nor specific references are provided. I therefore found it very hard by reading the manuscript to understand exactly which publication model, combination of services, and choice of providers each scenario refers to. This was made possible only by carefully analysing the formulas for the different calculations in the excel file. However, even after this more careful analysis, the motivation behind each scenario remained unclear. For example, it seems that the only difference between scenarios A and B in terms of content acquisition is using one service provider instead of another. In scenario A scholastica is used for online submission management (cell L18), while Akron is used in scenario B (cell J19).

I recommend that the different scenarios are not defined based on the choice of specific providers but according to different, clearly explained publication models, characterised, for example, by use of existing publishing infrastructure (e.g., institutional or disciplinary repositories as in the case of existing overlay journals), variable rejection rates, number of published articles, review policies, voluntary or hired editorial work, etc. The available choice of providers for specific services (or groups of services) and their impact on the costs can be discussed in the manuscript and even presented as a separate table. However, I consider it important that the initial scenarios are reported without any reference to specific providers but rather using average (or low/high) estimates. Otherwise, in their present form, tables 3 and 4 are very hard to follow. In both tables publication choices (number of articles, review models, voluntary editors) are mixed with providers (scholastica, generic providers, etc.) without a clear description (in the table or the manuscript) of the different publication models, or the services offered by each provider. For example, from the excel file I deduced that scenarios A2, B2 and C do not include costs for online submission, but it is not clear from the discussion in the manuscript or from the brief labels in table 3, which exact models allow the omission of these costs and how.

Insisting on the necessity to adequately describe the different publication scenarios, in the “scenarios” section the authors refer to a “decentralized/federated platform providing publishing functionalities”. However, again it is not clear what are the foundations of this model (e.g., a reference could be provided to the next generation repositories initiative promoted by COAR [1], or other similar proposals in the literature, such as in reference “20” in the manuscript), and whether this model is represented in one of the scenarios. Similarly, the authors briefly mention a PPPR model in the “results” section but there is no clear description of what exactly this model entails and which services from the original list allows to omit or circumvent.

To summarise, I strongly recommend that the different publication scenarios refer to publication options (not choice of providers) and that they are concisely described in the corresponding section with references to the literature or to existing examples when possible. It should be clear which services from the list correspond to each scenario and how different scenarios allow the omission of certain services. The different options for service providers should be discussed separately. For example, it would be useful to report the impact on the publication costs of choosing scholastica or Akron as a provider for a specific list of services (drawn from the initial services list) in a given publication scenario.

As a minor comment, I suspect that J21 is missing from the formula used to calculate cell J26. I would recommend that the authors had another careful look at their formulas to avoid similar omissions or errors.

Overall, I commend the authors for their work and invite them to consider my recommendations that I believe will significantly improve the uptake of this extremely valuable information.

References:

[1] https://www.coar-repositories.org/news-updates/what-we-do/next-generation-repositories/

Response to Reviewer #1: Pandelis Perakakis:

The cost analysis provided in this report is based on a list of 24 services grouped in three distinct categories: content acquisition, preparation, and dissemination. A first minor observation is that in the category of content acquisition, it would probably be more intuitive to list “online submission system” as the first item (before “searching and assigning reviewers”) to match the publication workflow.

Thank you, corrected.

A second and more important observation is that in this list, and throughout the manuscript, services are sometimes confounded with service providers. Since there are more than one providers for each of the services, I strongly recommend that the list only includes services, whereas in the manuscript different options for each service can be discussed. For example Crossref is not the only option for “DOI registration”, which I believe should be the title of this particular service. Similarly, the service provided by CLOCKSS/LOCKSS/Portico, could be called “long-term digital preservation”. Also, it is not clear what the service provided by OAPEN is, while “upload to Scopus…”, could be called “distribution to indexing services”. Should the authors decide to follow this recommendation I would advise to also modify the accompanying excel file accordingly.

This was our oversight and it is an excellent suggestion. We are now following it 100%, also in the Excel spreadsheet.

This is how it should be and we have no good explanation for why we did not write it that way. We have now re-ordered all components as suggested.

Following the logic that the list of services is the nucleus of the cost analysis, and the report itself, I suggest that table 1 is modified so that the first column displays the services and the second column the providers.

Also, it is important that the terms in the services list are used consistently throughout the manuscript. For example, in table 1 we find a service termed “peer review” and another called “peer review management”. It is not clear how these services correspond to the original list. When a service provider offers more than one service in the list, I would recommend to include all of these services in the table. If it is considered convenient to create a new grouping (e.g., peer review management), it should be clear -in the table and in the manuscript- which services from the original list are included in this group (e.g., 1a, 1b, 1c, etc.).

I see the point here, of course. We have been able to quickly fix the instances where it was just a matter of replacing a few words. However, it was not easy to address this very relevant point everywhere, as it is many times easier to refer to a series of steps with a shorthand rather than with a long list. Sometimes that shorthand can be a provider (e.g., Scholastica), sometimes it is a functionality such as, e.g., “OJS” for a system that manages submission, manuscript tracking and review management all at the same time. We have tried to rephrase as many of such instances as possible, but we are not sure if we were able to address this point in every single instance.

It is completely obvious how this section must be confusing for readers and, again, we do not have a good explanation for why we did not provide sufficient detail. Our lack of explanation could also be seen in some of Lisa Rose-Wiles’ comments. In attempting to follow these suggestions, we now have provided not only detailed explanations for each scenario in the text, but have also updated Table 3. In brief, scenario A and B differ in that B cases source multiple, generic publishing providers for the different steps (lower cost, more contracts, requires expertise), while A sources many steps from a single provider, specialized in scholarly publishing (more convenient, less expertise required, higher cost). Scenario C also covers all steps in principle, but does not count some costs such as editors (volunteers) or servers (institutional server) or a submission/tracking system (e.g., OJS). Post-publication peer-review decreases rejections and hence price (A2/B2). Scenario C2 replaces, e.g., servers and OJS with Scholastica.

We now cite Perakakis et al. 2010 very prominently, as well as the COAR report, together with a brief explanation of the concept. Both are referenced with the name they gave these solutions, i.e., “global open archive” or ”next generation repository”, respectively.

We are confident that the current version now addresses all the raised issues and that our choice of scenarios becomes clearer in the way we explain them now.

We have triple-checked these cells in the spreadsheet and could not find any missing values. We have also checked all adjacent cells for possible errors and were not able to find any. We have gone over the entire spreadsheet both for the consistency of the calculations, the accuracy of the text descriptions and whether any of the costs needed to be updated due to change market rates. We have not been able to locate any problems. We suggest arranging an online call with video and screen sharing to identify and remove potential errors we may have missed or are unable to identify.

What Is the Real Cost of Scientific Publishing?

After spending years researching, scientific researchers publish their findings to share them with the larger scientific community. It is standard procedure that peer-reviewed scientific journals charge a significant publication fee for publishing a paper , especially traditional print journals. The cost of publishing can be very high, depending on the journal selected. Recently, these publication fees have come into question, with the scientific community wondering what the real cost to publishers is.

What Costs are Involved in Publishing?

Scientific publishing costs vary from journal to journal. Most journals are unwilling to disclose their publishing costs, so estimations are typically done based upon general industry statistics and revenues. There are costs involved in publishing an article , including the staff, distribution costs, and printing fees. There is also a significant amount of work done behind the scenes that takes a paper from submission to publication. Publishers often have to edit, proofread , check for plagiarism, and send the papers for peer review , all which increase the cost of publishing.

How Much Does it Cost to Publish?

Publishing costs for journals can be high. According to one study that analyzed industry data from the consulting firm Outsell, the typical profit margins for the academic publishing industry are around 20 to 30 percent. Estimating the final cost of publication per paper based upon revenue generated and the total number of published articles, they estimate that the average cost to publish an article is around $3500 to $4000. This estimate is most likely very high, especially for open access journals that typically only publish digital copies. The cost per paper in these journals could be as low as a few hundred dollars per article.

Who Pays to Publish in Journals?

A large percentage of the cost of publishing a research paper falls upon the researchers. Most journals charge a significant fee to those submitting a paper, sometimes in the thousands of dollars. The paper’s author might have to pay these fees, although sometimes his or her university or institution has a subscription fee or otherwise covers the cost of publishing. Some journals are able to provide a much lower fee for publication because the government, a university, or a society subsidizes them.

Journals with a higher publication fee defend their costs by saying they put more effort into reviewing and editing each article, and are more selective about the articles published. Researchers continue to publish in these journals because they provide a greater prestige to the author due to their long-standing, esteemed reputation.

The Future of Journal Costs

Until there is more clarity on exactly how much each publishing house spends on publishing each article, the research community will never know what the real cost of publication is. There is pressure to lower the amount charged to authors to have an article published, and some journals are making it easier for researchers to publish their work . However, it will be years before the most well-respected and often most expensive journals begin to lower their fees, both for submitting and reading articles, making it easier for the scientific community to publish, read, and share information on the latest findings.

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How Much Does It Cost to Publish a Research Paper?

• September 11, 2023

Are you worried about how much does it costs to publish a research paper? It is the most important factor to consider when looking for publication services. The significance of publishing research can’t be overstated. However, research publishing includes multiple factors essential for researchers to understand.

In this article, we will help you understand the expenses of research paper publication and the possibility of a paper being rejected after acceptance.

The cost of publishing a research paper can vary depending on multiple factors, including the journal chosen and any optional services selected.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Many journals demand that authors pay APCs to cover the research publication costs. These charges may range from a hundred to thousands of dollars per paper. The amount often depends on the journal’s reputation, impact factor, and the level of service provided.

Submission Fees

Some high-indexed journals also charge article submission fees from authors for manuscript review. These fees help cover the cost of the peer-review process. The submission fees generally range from a hundred dollars.

Page Charges

Besides APCs, some journals may require authors to pay page charges, particularly for printed paper copies. These charges vary based on the number of pages in the final publication.

Color and Supplementary Material Fees

You may incur additional charges if your paper includes color figures, tables, or supplementary materials. These fees can add up, so being aware of them is essential.

Optional Services

Suppose you are finding out how much it costs to publish a research paper. In that case, it is pertinent to mention that many publishers offer optional services such as expedited review, open access options, and professional editing services with additional costs.

Membership Fees

Membership cost also affects the overall charges of research publication. Because, in some cases, authors may need to become members of a professional organization or society to submit their work to specific journals or conferences. Membership fees can be annual or one-time payments.

Reprints and Offprints

Researchers often order reprints or offprints of their published papers for distribution. These costs can vary based on the number of copies required.

Is It Worth It to Pay for Paper Publication?

This is the primary concern of almost every researcher, “Is it worth it to pay for research paper publication?” Yes, if you want to pursue your career in academics. Here are a few aspects that must be considered while publishing research.

Also Read: How Much Does Dissertation Proofreading Cost?

Journal Reputation and Impact Factor

Journals with high-impact factors mostly charge higher APCs but offer increased visibility. If your research aims to reach a vast audience and gain recognition globally, paying a considerable amount to a reputable journal may be worthwhile.

Funding Availability

Some funding agencies and institutions provide grants or support for publication fees. In such cases, it makes sense to use these resources to publish in reputable journals.

Open Access vs. Subscription Journals

Open-access journals make research freely accessible to everyone but tend to have higher APCs. Subscription-based journals may have lower fees but restrict access to those without subscriptions. Consider the accessibility and reach of your research when choosing between these options.

Career Goals

Early-career researchers may benefit from publishing in well-established journals to build their reputation. As researchers progress in their careers, they may prioritize open-access journals to maximize the dissemination of their work.

Reviewer and Editorial Services

Some journals offer professional editing and reviewer services, which can improve your paper’s quality and chances of acceptance. These services may justify the higher research publication costs.

Can a Paper Be Rejected After Acceptance?

Surprisingly, yes, a paper can be rejected after acceptance, although it is relatively rare. Here are some scenarios in which this might occur.

Ethical Concerns

If ethical issues in the research come to light after acceptance, the paper may be rejected. The ethical concern includes plagiarism, data fabrication, and other unethical practices.

Quality Issues

Mostly, papers are accepted based on initial reviews, but further examination by the editorial team may reveal significant flaws that cannot be corrected. This is also the reason for research paper rejection after acceptance.

Overlapping Content

A journal may revoke acceptance of a paper if it is discovered to overlap with previously published work substantially.

Failure to Meet Requirements

Journals often have specific formatting requirements. If authors fail to meet these requirements in the final submission, it may result in paper rejection after acceptance.

Author Misconduct

Instances of author misconduct, such as inappropriate authorship attribution or undisclosed conflicts of interest, can lead to post-acceptance rejection.

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, you got the answer to your questions, “How much does it cost to publish a research paper ?” and Can a paper be rejected after acceptance?

It is pertinent to mention that research paper publishing includes various costs such as APCs, submission fees, and optional service charges. Whether it’s worth paying for publication depends on your research goals, available funding, and the journal’s reputation. While it is rare that papers can be rejected after acceptance, it is necessary for researchers to carefully consider the guidelines of the journal and other potential factors to avoid rejection.

• Open access
• Published: 14 November 2021

A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review

• Balazs Aczel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9364-4988 1 ,
• Barnabas Szaszi 1 &
• Alex O. Holcombe 2  

Research Integrity and Peer Review volume  6 , Article number:  14 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The amount and value of researchers’ peer review work is critical for academia and journal publishing. However, this labor is under-recognized, its magnitude is unknown, and alternative ways of organizing peer review labor are rarely considered.

Using publicly available data, we provide an estimate of researchers’ time and the salary-based contribution to the journal peer review system.

We found that the total time reviewers globally worked on peer reviews was over 100 million hours in 2020, equivalent to over 15 thousand years. The estimated monetary value of the time US-based reviewers spent on reviews was over 1.5 billion USD in 2020. For China-based reviewers, the estimate is over 600 million USD, and for UK-based, close to 400 million USD.

Conclusions

By design, our results are very likely to be under-estimates as they reflect only a portion of the total number of journals worldwide. The numbers highlight the enormous amount of work and time that researchers provide to the publication system, and the importance of considering alternative ways of structuring, and paying for, peer review. We foster this process by discussing some alternative models that aim to boost the benefits of peer review, thus improving its cost-benefit ratio.

Peer Review reports

One of the main products of the academic publication system, the journal article, is a co-production of researchers and publishers. Researchers provide value not only by doing the research and writing up the results as a manuscript, but also by serving as peer reviewers. Publishers provide services of selection, screening, and dissemination of articles, including ensuring (proper) meta-data indexing in databases. Although several careful estimates are available regarding the cost of academic publishing e.g., [ 1 ], one aspect these estimates often neglect is the cost of peer reviews [ 2 ]. Our aim was to provide a timely estimation of reviewers’ contribution to the publication system in terms of time and financial value and discuss the implications.

In their peer reviewer role, scientists and other researchers provide comments to improve other researchers’ manuscripts and judge their quality. They offer their time and highly specialized knowledge to provide a detailed evaluation and suggestions for improvement of manuscripts. On average, a reviewer completes 4.73 reviews per year, Footnote 1 yet, according to Publons, Footnote 2 certain reviewers complete over a thousand reviews a year. This contribution takes considerable time from other academic work. In the biomedical domain alone, the time devoted to peer review in 2015 was estimated to be 63.4 M hours [ 3 ].

A manuscript typically receives multiple rounds of reviews before acceptance, and each round typically involves two or more researchers as peer reviewers. Peer review work is rarely formally recognized or directly financially compensated in the journal system (exceptions include some medical journals that pay for statistical reviewers and some finance journals that pay for quick referee reports). Most universities seem to expect academics to do review work as part of their research or scholarly service mission, although we know of none with an explicit policy about how much time they should spend on it.

While peer review work is a critical element of academic publishing, we found only a single estimate of its financial value, which was from 2007. Then, when the global number of published articles was not even half of the present volume, rough estimates indicated that if reviewers were paid for their time, the bill would be on the order of £1.9bn [ 4 ].

As a facet of the research process that currently requires labor by multiple human experts, reviewing contributes to a cost disease situation for science. “Cost disease” [ 5 ] refers to the fact that while the cost of many products and services have steadily decreased over the last two hundred years, this has not happened for some for which the amount of labor time per unit has not changed. This can make some products and services increasingly expensive relative to everything else in society, as has occurred, for example, for live classical music concerts. This may also be the fate of scholarly publication, unless reviewing is made more efficient.

The fairness and efficiency of the traditional peer review system has recently become a highly-debated topic [ 6 , 7 ]. In this paper, we extend this discussion by providing an update on the estimate of researchers’ time and the salary-based contribution to the peer-review system. We used publicly available data for our calculations. Our approximation is almost certainly an underestimate because not only do we choose conservative values of parameters, but for the total number of academic articles, we rely on a database (Dimensions) that does not purport to include every journal in the world. We discuss the implications of our estimates and identify a number of alternative models for better utilizing research time in peer review.

Methods and results

To estimate the time and the salary-based monetary value of the peer review conducted for journals in a single year, we had to estimate the number of peer reviews per year, the average time spent per review, and the hourly labor cost of academics. In case of uncertainty, we used conservative estimates for our parameters, therefore, the true values are likely to be higher.

The total number of articles is obviously a critical input for our calculation. Unfortunately, there appears to be no database available that includes all the academic articles published in the entire world. Ulrich’s Periodicals Database may list the largest number of journals - querying their database for “journals” or “conference proceedings” and “Refereed / Peer-reviewed” yielded 99,753 entries. However, Ulrich’s does not indicate the number of articles that these entities publish. Out of the available databases that do report the number of articles, we chose to use Dimensions’ dataset ( https://www.dimensions.ai/ ) which collects and collected articles from 87,000 scholarly journals, much more than Scopus (~ 20,000) or Web of Science (~ 14,000) [ 8 ].

Number of peer reviews per year

Only estimates exist for how many peer reviews associated with journals occur each year. Publons [ 9 ] estimated that the 2.9 million articles indexed in the Web of Science in 2016 required 13.7 million reviews. To calculate the number of reviews relevant to 2020, we used the formula used by Publons [ 9 ] - eq. 1 below. In that formula, a review is what one researcher does in one round of a review process. Footnote 3 For submissions that are ultimately accepted by the journal submitted to, the Publons formula assumes that on average there are two reviews in the first round and one in the second round; for rejected articles (excluding desk rejections) the formula assumes an average of two reviews for submissions that are ultimately rejected, both in the first round. Publons’ assumptions are based on their general knowledge of the industry but no specific data. Note, however, that if anything these are most likely underestimations as not all peer reviews are included in our estimation. For example, the review work done by some editors when handling a manuscript is not usually indexed in Publons, and a single written review report may be signed by several researchers.

Publons estimated the acceptance rate for peer-reviewed submissions to be 55%. That is, 45% of manuscripts that are not desk rejected are, after one or more rounds of review, ultimately rejected. Before including Publons’ estimates in our calculations, we evaluated them based on other available information. The Thomson Reuters publishing company reported numbers regarding the submissions, acceptances, and rejections that occurred at their ScholarOne journal management system for the period 2005–2010 [ 10 ]. In agreement with other sources [ 11 , 12 ], it showed that the mean acceptance rates have apparently declined [ 10 ], the proportion of submissions that are eventually accepted by the journal the manuscript was submitted at was 0.40 in 2005: 0.37 in 2010, and 0.35 in 2011 [ 11 , 12 ].

We did not find estimates of acceptance rates for the last several years, but we assume that the decline described by Thomson Reuters [ 10 ] continued to some extent, and assume that the present mean acceptance rate at journals is 0.30 then we can arrive at Publons’ figures. However, for the final numbers, we also need to estimate the rate of desk rejections as well. Although the rate of desk rejections likely varies substantially across journals (e.g., 22–26% at PLOS ONE Footnote 4 ), referenced values [ 13 , 14 ] and journal publisher estimates Footnote 5 lead us to estimate this value around 0.45.

The above estimates imply that, on average, every 100 submissions to a journal comprise 30 that are accepted after one or more rounds of peer review, 45 that are desk rejected, and 25 that are rejected after review. Thus, among submissions sent out for review, 55% (30 / (30 + 25) are ultimately accepted. That is, the articles published represent 55% of all reviewed submissions, indicating that 45% of submissions that were reviewed were rejected. These values are undoubtedly speculative, but they are consistent with Publons’ estimates.

Therefore, to estimate the number of peer reviews per year, we used Publons’ [ 9 ] formula:

To obtain these values, we had to estimate the number of peer reviews performed for articles in 2020. For that, we used the numbers provided by the Dimensions portal ( www.dimensions.ai ). The free version as well as the subscription version of Dimensions currently provide separate numbers for articles, chapters, proceedings, preprints, monographs, and edited books. For the sake of simplicity, our estimate is confined to articles.

The total number of articles published in 2020 according to the Dimensions database is 4,701,988. Assuming that this sum reflects the 55% acceptance rate of reviewed submissions, the number of reviewed but rejected submissions (the 45% of all reviewed submissions) are estimated to be globally 4,701,988/55*45 = 3,847,081. Based on these calculations, the total number of peer reviews for submitted articles in 2020 is 4,701,988*3 + 3,847,081*2 = 21,800,126.

Time spent on reviews

Several reports exist for the average time a reviewer spends when reviewing a manuscript. All of these are unfortunately based on subjective reports by reviewers rather than an objective measure. The only thing resembling an objective indication we found was in the Publons dashboard ( Publons.com ), which as of 6 Aug 2021 indicated that the average length of reviews in their database across all fields is approximately 390 words. This highlights that the average review likely has substantive content beyond a yes/no verdict, but this cannot be converted to a time estimate. A 2009 survey responded to by 3597 randomly selected reviewers indicated that the reported average time spent on the last review was 6 h [ 15 ], a 2016 survey reported that the median reviewing time is 5 h [ 9 ]. Another survey in 2008 found that the average reported time spent reviewing was 8.5 h [ 16 ]. To be noted, it is likely that the second round of reviews do not take as long as the first one. To be conservative (and considering the tendency of people to overestimate how much time they work), we will use 6 h as the average time reviewers spend on each review.

Based on our estimate of the number of reviews and hours spent on a review, we estimate that in 2020 reviewers spent 21,800,126 × 6 h = 130,800,757 h on reviewing. This is equivalent to 14,932 years (at 365 days a year and 24 h of labor per day) (Fig.  1 ).

Overview of our calculation estimates of time spent on reviewing for scholarly articles in 2020. Number of published articles was obtained from Dimesions.AI database, all other numbers are assumptions informed by previous literature

Hourly wage of reviewers

To estimate the monetary value of the time reviewers spend on reviews, we multiplied reviewers’ average hourly wage by the time they spend reviewing. Note that some scholars consider their reviewing work to be volunteer work rather than part of their professional duties [ 5 ], but here we use their wages as an estimate of the value of this time. No data seem to have been reported about the wages of journal reviewers, therefore, we require some further assumptions. We assumed that the distribution of the countries in which reviewers work is similar to the distribution of the countries in the production of articles. In other words, researchers in countries that produce more articles also perform more reviews, while countries that produce few articles also do proportionally few reviews. Given the English-language and geographically Anglophone-centered concentration of scientific journals, we suspect that people in English-speaking countries are called on as reviewers perhaps even more than is their proportion as authors [ 17 ]. Because such countries have higher wages than most others, our assumption of reviewer countries being proportional to author countries is conservative for total cost. Accordingly, we calculated the country contributions to the global article production by summing the total number of publications for all countries as listed in the Dimensions database and computing the proportion of articles produced by each country.

Based on the results of the Peer Review Survey [ 15 ] and to keep the model simple and conservative, we assumed that reviewing is conducted almost entirely by people employed by academic workplaces such as universities and research institutes and that junior and senior researchers participate in reviewing in a ratio of 1:1. Therefore, to calculate the hourly reviewer wage in a given country we used.

This yields a figure of $69.25 per hour for the U.S., $57.21 for the UK, and $33.26 for China (Table  1 ).

Value of reviewing labor

We estimated the value of reviewing by multiplying the calculated hourly reviewer wage in a country by the number of estimated reviews in that country and the time preparing one review. We calculated each country’s share from the global number of reviews by using the country’s proportional contribution to global production of articles. In this calculation, each article produced by international collaborations counts as one to each contributing country. This yielded that the monetary value of reviewing labor for the three countries that contributed to the most articles in 2020, is: $USD 1.5 billion for the U.S., $626 million for China, and $391 million for the UK (Table 1 ). An Excel file including the formula used for the estimation in the present paper with interchangeable parameters is available at the OSF page of the project https://osf.io/xk8tc/ .

The high price of scientific publishing receives a lot of attention, but the focus is usually on journal subscription fees, article processing charges, and associated publisher costs such as typesetting, indexing, and manuscript tracking systems e.g., [ 1 ]. The cost of peer review is typically no included. Here, we found that the total time reviewers worked on peer reviews was over 130 million hours in 2020, equivalent to almost 15 thousand years. The estimated monetary value of the time US-based reviewers spent on writing reviews was over 1.5 billion USD in 2020. For China-based reviewers, the estimate is over 600 million USD, and for UK-based, close to 400 million USD. These are only rough estimates but they help our understanding of the enormous amount of work and time that researchers provide to the publication system. While predominantly reviewers do not get paid to conduct reviews, their time is likely paid for by universities and research institutes.

Without major reforms, it seems unlikely that reviewing will become more economical, relative to other costs associated with publishing. One reason is that while technology improvements may automate or partially automate some aspects of publishing, peer review likely cannot be automated as easily. However, reducing details that reviewers should check might soon become automated (see https://scicrunch.org/ASWG ).

A second issue is that while there is much discussion of how to reduce other costs associated with publishing, little attention has been devoted to reducing the cost of peer review, even though it would likely be the costliest component of the system if reviewers were paid for the reviewers – rather than conducting the reviews under their “salary” paid time. After a long period of above-inflation subscription journal price increases, funders have attempted to put downward pressure on prices through initiatives such as Plan S [ 18 ] and through funding separate publishing infrastructures e.g., Wellcome Open Research and Gates Open Research [ 19 , 20 ]. However, because publishers do not have to pay for peer review, putting pressure on publishers may have no effect on review labor costs. Peer review labor sticks out as a large cost that is not being addressed systematically by publishers. In another domain, research funders have worked on reducing the cost of paid grant review, for example by shortening the proposals or reducing the need for consensus meetings after individual assessments [ 21 ].

Here we will discuss two reforms to reduce the cost of peer review. The first would decrease the amount of labor needed per published article by reducing redundancy in reviews. The second would make better use of less-trained reviewers. Finally, we will briefly mention a few other reforms that may not reduce cost per review but would boost the benefits of peer review, thus improving the cost-benefit ratio.

Reducing redundancy in peer review

Many manuscripts get reviewed at multiple journals, which is a major inefficiency e.g., [ 22 ]. Because this is a multiplicative factor, it exacerbates the issue of the rising global increase in number of submissions. While improvements in the manuscript between submissions means that the reviewing process is not entirely redundant, typically at least some of the assessment being done is duplication. Based on survey data [ 23 ], we conservatively estimated that, on average, a manuscript is submitted to two journals before acceptance (including the accepting journal). In other words, each accepted article has one rejection and resubmission behind it. Should the reviews of a previous submission be available to the journal of the new submission, reviewing time could be substantially reduced (presuming that the quality of review does not differ between journals – and it very likely does), but unfortunately this is not common practice. If we assume that the “passed on” or open reviews would reduce the requirements by one review per manuscript, then approx. 28 M hours (of our 85 M hour total estimate) could be saved annually. In the US alone, it would mean a savings of approx. 297 M USD of work. Footnote 6

Some savings of this kind have already begun. Several publishers or journals share reviews across their own journals (PLOS, Nature [ 24 ]), which is sometimes known as “cascading peer review” [ 25 ]. Some journals openly publish the reviews they solicit (e.g., eLife; Meta-psychology; PLOS; Research Integrity and Peer Review; for a recent review see [ 26 ]), although typically not when the manuscript is rejected (Meta-psychology is an exception, and eLife will publish the reviews after a rejected manuscript is accepted somewhere else). The Review Commons initiative allows authors to have their preprint reviewed, with those reviews used by journal publishers including EMBO and PLoS [ 27 ]. Similarly, Peer Community In ( peercommunityin.org ) solicits reviews of preprints that can then be used by journals, including over 70 that have indicated they will consider such reviews.

A decline in the amount of research conducted, or the number of manuscripts this research results in, would reduce the amount of peer review labor needed. The number of articles being published has been growing rapidly for many decades [ 28 , 29 ]. Some of this may be due to salami slicing (publishing thinner papers, but more of them), but this is not necessarily true - one study found that researchers’ individual publication rate has not increased [ 30 ] when normalized by the number of authors per paper, suggesting that authors are collaborating more to boost their publication count rather than publishing thinner papers. Hence, the increase in publication volume may be more a result of the steady increase in the global economy and, with it, support for researchers. Quality rather than publication quantity has, however, recently begun to be emphasized more by some funders and national evaluation schemes, and this may moderate the rate of growth in number of publications and potentially the peer review burden [ 31 ].

Improving the allocation of review labor

Broadening and deepening the reviewer pool.

Journal editors disproportionately request reviews from senior researchers, whose time is arguably the most valuable. One reason for this is that senior researchers on average show up more often in literature searches, and also editors favor people they are familiar with, and younger researchers have had less time to become familiar to editors [ 32 ]. With the same individuals tapped more and more, the proportion of requests that they can agree to falls [ 33 ], which is likely one reason that editors have to issue increasing numbers of requests to review (a contributor to increasing costs which we did not calculate). Journal peer review, therefore, takes longer and longer because the system fails to keep up with academia’s changing demographics [ 3 ]. Today, more women and minorities are doing academic research, and the contributions from countries such as China are growing rapidly. But many of these researchers don’t show up on the radar of the senior researchers, located disproportionately in North America and Europe, who edit journals. This can be addressed by various initiatives, such as appointing more diverse editors and encouraging junior researchers to sign up to databases that editors consult when they seek reviewers [ 34 , 35 ].

A more substantial increase in efficiency might come from soliciting contributions to peer review from individuals with less expertise than traditionally has been expected. Journal editors traditionally look for world experts on a topic, whose labor is particularly costly in addition to being in short supply and in high demand. But perhaps contributions to peer review shouldn’t be confined only to those highly expert in a field. Evaluating a manuscript means considering multiple dimensions of the work and how it is presented. For some research areas, detailed checklists have been developed regarding all the information that should be reported in a manuscript (see www.equator-network.org ). This provides a way to divide up the reviewing labor and have some aspects where even students, after some training, can vet aspects of manuscripts. Thus, we are hopeful that after more meta-research on what is desired from peer review for particular research areas, parts of peer review can be done by people who are not experts in the very specific topic of a manuscript but can nonetheless be very capable at evaluating particular aspects of a manuscript (and as mentioned above, automation can help with some tasks).

This process could also lead to greater specialization in peer review. For example, for manuscripts that report clinical trials, some people could be trained in evaluating the blinding protocol and resulting degree of success of blinding [ 36 ], and if they had the opportunity to evaluate that particular portion of many manuscripts, they grow better at it and thus can evaluate more in a shorter time, reducing the number of hours of labor that need be paid for. To some extent, this specialization in peer review has already begun. As reporting standards for particular kinds of research have become more widespread (e.g., Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) for clinical trials, Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) for animal research, and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) for systematic reviews of randomized trials Footnote 7 ), professional staff at some publishers have begun performing some checks for compliance with these standards. For example, staff at PLOS check all manuscripts on human subject research for a statement regarding compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and clinical trials research for a CONSORT statement. These staff presumably can do this job more efficiently, and do so for a lower salary, than an academic charged with peer reviewing every word of an entire manuscript. There are also some services (e.g., RIPETA, Footnote 8 PUBSURE Footnote 9 ) that automatically screen the to-be-submitted manuscripts and provide reports on potential errors and instant feedback to the authors, while other products (e.g., AuthorONE Footnote 10 ) support publishers with automatic manuscripts screening including technical readiness checks, plagiarism checks, and checking for ethics statements.

Unlocking the value of reviews

Some reforms to peer review would not reduce the cost per review, but would increase the benefits per review, improving the cost-benefit ratio. One such reform is making reviews public instead of confidential. Under the currently-dominant system of anonymised peer review, however, only the authors, other reviewers, and editor of the manuscript have the opportunity to benefit from the content of the review.

When reviews are published openly, the expert judgments and information within reviews can benefit others. One benefit is the judgments and comments made regarding the manuscript. Reviews often provide reasons for caution about certain interpretations, connections to other literature, points about the weaknesses of the study design, and what the study means from their particular perspective. While those comments influence the revision of the manuscript, often they either don’t come through as discrete points or the revisions are made to avoid difficult issues, so that they don’t need to be mentioned.

It is not uncommon for some of the points made in a review to also be applicable to other manuscripts. Some topics of research have common misconceptions that lead to certain mistakes or unfortunate choices in study design. Some of the experienced researchers that are typically called upon to do peer review can rapidly detect these issues, and pass on the “tips and tricks” that make for a rigorous study of a particular topic or that uses a particular technique. But because peer reviews are traditionally available only to the editor and authors of the reviewed study, this dissemination of knowledge happens only very slowly, much like the traditional apprenticeship system required for professions before the invention of the printing press. How much more productive would the scientific enterprise be if the information in peer reviews were unlocked? We should soon be able to get a better sense of this, as this is already being done by the journals that have begun publishing at least some of their peer reviews (e.g, Meta-psychology, eLife, the PLOS journals; F1000Research, Royal Society Open Science, Annals of Anatomy, Nature Communications, PeerJ [ 20 ]). It will be very difficult, however, to put a financial value on the benefits. Fortunately, there are also other reasons that suggest that such policies should be adopted, such as providing more information about the quality of published papers.

In some cases, performing a peer review can actually benefit the reviewer. In Publons’ 2018 reviewer survey, 33% of respondents indicated that one reason (they could choose two from a list of nine) they agreed to review manuscripts was to “Keep up-to-date with the latest research trends in my field.” (p12 9). If more of such people can be matched with a manuscript, reviewing becomes more of a “win-win”, with greater benefits accruing to the reviewer than may be typical in the current system. Better matching, then, would mean an increased return on the portion of an employer’s payment of a researcher’s salary that pays for peer review. The initiatives that broaden the reviewer pool beyond the usual senior researchers that editors are most likely to think of may have this effect.

Limitations

A limitation of the present study is that it does not quantify academic editors’ labor, which is typically funded by universities, research institutes or publishers and is integral to the peer review process. At prestige journals with high rejection rates, a substantial proportion of (associate) editors’ time is spent desk-rejecting articles, which could be considered wasteful, as rejected articles are eventually published somewhere else. Which also requires additional work from authors to prepare the manuscripts and navigate different submission systems.

Additionally, our study’s limitations come from the poverty of the available data. For example, today, no available database covers all scholarly journals and their articles. The rates of acceptance and rejections we used are approximate estimates. The average time spent on reviews likely strongly depends on fields and length of manuscript and we do not know how representative the number we used is of all academia. We could not calculate the cost of review for journal articles and conference papers separately, although they might differ in this regard. The nationality and salary of the reviewers are not published either, therefore, our calculations need to be treated with caution as they have to rely on broad assumptions. Nevertheless, the aim of this study was to estimate only the magnitude of the cost of peer review without the ambition to arrive at precise figures. We encourage publishers and other stakeholders to explore and openly share more information about peer review activities to foster a fairer and more efficient academic world.

Availability of data and materials

The public dataset supporting the conclusions of this article is available from the https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication webpage.

An Excel file including the formula used for the estimation in the present paper with interchangeable parameters is available at the OSF page of the project https://osf.io/xk8tc/ .

Based on Personal communication with the Publons team.

https://publons.com/researcher/?is_core_collection=1&is_last_twelve_months=1&order_by=num_reviews

Note, that there are cases when a single submitted review is prepared by more than one individual, but the used formula does not differentiate these cases from when a review is prepared by only one individual.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/journal-information

https://www.elsevier.com/authors-update/story/publishing-tips/5-ways-you-can-ensure-your-manuscript-avoids-the-desk-reject-pile

(715,645 articles × 6 h)* $69.25

For their collection, see https://www.equator-network.org/ .

https://ripeta.com/

https://pubsure.researcher.life/

https://www.enago.com/authorone-publisher.htm

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We are thankful to James Heathers and three anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Aczel, B., Szaszi, B. & Holcombe, A.O. A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review. Res Integr Peer Rev 6 , 14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-021-00118-2

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How much does it cost to get a scientific paper?

The Backstory :  As it stands today,when one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides the funding for a scientific research project, and those results are published, they must be made freely available to public, within a set period of time.  The reasoning behind this requirement is that taxpayers funded everything about the research except for the final publication, and so they have already paid for access.

The Research Works Act ( #RWA ), HR 3699, is a bill in the House of Representatives that would roll back this requirement.  If it passes, taxpayers will most likely have to pay exorbitant fees for access to publicly-funded research.  I'll explain why in a moment.

The Research Works Act will harm science education because students and instructors at small colleges and community colleges generally lack access to scientific journals and we will no longer be able to afford to use scientific literature in our courses.

How much does it cost?

One commenter on a my earlier post about the effect on science education noted that students and others would still be able to purchase research articles if RWA passes.

I thought, dear readers, you might like to know what that privilege is likely to cost.

What does a personal subscription cost today?

Today, a one year personal subscription to Science costs $149 for a member and $75 for a student. A personal subscription for one year of Nature costs $199.  We subscribe to both and pay $350 a year for the privilege.

The problem is that working in science, and learning about science, requires looking at papers from multiple journals and multiple years from those journals.

Access to one journal is rarely sufficient.

Let's look at the subscription costs for some other journals.

Two other journals that I frequently use are Nature Genetics and Nature Biotechnology. These cost $225 per year and $250 per year, respectively.

Here are the yearly subscription costs for a few of the other Nature journals:

$503  Acta Pharmacologica Sinica $586  American Journal of Hypertension $319  Asian Journal of Andrology $865  Bone Marrow Transplantation $99    BoneKEy Reports $474  British Dental Journal $569  British Journal of Cancer $542  Cancer Gene Therapy $417  Cell Death and Differentiation $417  Cell Research

At $865 per year, a personal subscription to the on-line only version, of Bone Marrow Transplantation would be hard for me to justify.  But then, I'm not an M.D.

Now, consider Nature has 91 publications, with many subscription costs over $300 per year for each journal. I've been told that library subscriptions are more costly than personal subscriptions.  Is it really that surprising that our libraries say no?

What do individual articles cost?

Could we get by with having students read individual articles?

I looked up the prices for individual articles from some of the journals that I use.

The table below shows the costs to purchase a single article from 14 different journals.

Out the 14 journals, 9 of them charge $30 per article or more. I looked at multiple Nature journals since the prices for each journal subscription varied so widely.

Many times when we have students research a topic, we want them to look at multiple articles from multiple journals. Students might need to look at ten papers to complete an assignment.

We also tend to have students investigate different topics.  This means that we can't just give every student the same set of articles.  Each student needs to get multiple articles from multiple sources, and each article could cost $30-35 at today's prices.  Today, we can make do by having students stick to open access articles. RWA will kill that option.

If papers were priced more reasonably, like songs in iTunes, we instructors would find RWA less alarming.  But as it stands, if publishers charge the all articles with the prices they're using now, it will kill our ability to use the literature in the classroom.

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You forgot to include the pricing for articles from PLoS and BMC publishing!!! $0 :)

PLoS is a bit different since authors pay for publication. I'm not sure how BMC works.

I left them out since the business models are so different.

Worse, the journals don't actually provide the content OR the proofing - all the experts are external, making the high costs bloody shocking. In the average paper I write, I cite ~ 25 publications, with a median cost of about $32 dollars. Luckily the university pay the charges, otherwise it would cost me approximately ~$800 per paper, which I give to them for free (as do all scientists) and will cost others about $32 to access!

I have just obtained a PhD and am now technically graduated and yet have a good number of papers to write. I am lucky the university I went to are kind enough to allow me to access papers I need, otherwise I simply could never afford to write my own papers!

There is something fundamentally wrong with this set up isn't there? George Monbiot and Ben Goldacre have written about this in the UK..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/bad-science-academi…

I wrote my Congressman (John Lewis) making the same point. Everyone who cares about this should write to his or her Congressperson.

First of all, I must clarify some points made by Sandra in the original post. The NIH embargo period is 12 months. That means, any research funded in whole or even in part by the NIH after the 12 months must be made available for free. Within the 12 months, when fresh research is desired most, the user must pay for the article. OA advocates want to decrease the embargo to 0 months (free right away - they have introduced a bill over the past few years that would do this), while the RWA would abolish of the requirement to make any publication free after any certain period of time.

There, we have the ground rules.

That said, I still would like to know the percentage of student's or faculty that are paying the above mentioned rates. To my knowledge, access to journals is not a problem for the preponderance of folks in academia. Their institutions pay for access, and band together to use economies of scale to negotiate lower prices. See: California university system vs. Nature.

Community college should do the same. If there are specialty journals that you wish to subscribe to, by all means, please do.

I still don't understand the desire to ask taxpayers to fund your access to journals that were not created out of thin air. I fully concede the above commenter's points about the volunteer system that reduces costs, but since even non-profit publishers charge a fee, that should be a clear sign that profit is not superfluous. Any publicly traded entity has a 10-k on file to view their costs - I suggest you take a look at that. There is a real cost to produce journals. So the question is, who shall pay?

I would offer that the two models (author pays and user pays) are the two competing models. In one, the user pays for access to something that he or she desires. This community is very very small, very educated, and typically quite affluent. In an author pays model, it is the taxpayer that pays for the cost of the journal publication. It should really be called the taxpayer pays model. In that model, a grantee earmarks a couple of thousand dollars, money that could be used for research, and pays to create the article. The costs don't go down: if a large publisher had a profit margin of 5% last year, which is about average, your table again would still be too high for your liking I suppose. After all, ACS is the highest per article and they are a non-profit entity.

So as it appears that since the cost of publications are real and must be paid in order to ensure the veracity of science, who shall pay? I would say that the small, highly educated, affluent community should pay for access to their very specialized and technical journals, while the researchers should be able to use every last scarce penny towards conducting actual research on behalf of their taxpayer investors.

The gross price gouging of the journals is a big complaint of mine even just as a regular citizen. For example I was recently prescribed an SSRI and wanted to double check if there was any possibility of long term, irreversible harm. The doctor had told me know. I happen to know that doctors hand drugs out like candy these days and that there *is* actually a lot of de facto corruption and bias inserted by drug companies among the regular rank and file doctors. I was skeptical, even that I should really be being prescribed anything as I don't even agree that I am depressed - I went to the doctor for a problem related to bone deformation and walked away with a prescription for antidepressants (and dick all progress on the actual problem I went about)!

So I looked some stuff up on google scholar. Turns out that there IS a very substantial chance of permanent brain damage, in the several percent range at least and there isn't much research - just enough to know that the reassurances the drug companies had been giving everyone that it was oh-so rare were complete bullshit. Oh, and the papers explicitly stated that the vast majority of doctors are unaware of the fact, and are probably overprescribing as a result.

I am on an extremely small income (11 k per year) and had to pay more than 70 bucks just for 2 articles, plus if I had bought all the ones I wanted to see, it would have been way more obviously. It's the same problems as the banksters; the publishers just aren't doing any real work, they just get rich by abusing certain social norms etc.

It's sad in an open access discussion, one in which I was spoken for in the original post, I have my posts rejected here. Truly sad.

Dear Just saying: you're jumping to conclusions about being blocked. I don't have much control over the spam filter. Sometimes comments get blocked that shouldn't be blocked. I don't check the comments regularly and I often don't know this has happened.

To address some of your points, you state that:

"In an author pays model, it is the taxpayer that pays for the cost of the journal publication."

This is correct. This is also true in the "user pays model." You just don't see the money trail as clearly.

In one case, grant money directly pays for access to journals and papers. I've used grant money to purchase access to a few of those $30 papers. In the other case, grant money goes to help libraries pay for subscriptions through a budget item called "indirect costs." At some Universities, these costs are almost equal to the $ amount requested for research.

It sounds you're not very familiar with higher education or high school for that matter, either. There are lots of college instructor and high school instructors, too, who use these resources.

You probably realize this, but small companies and non-profits need access to journal articles, too. These companies are not affluent, and are also challenged by the high cost of individual papers. The Research Works Act will hurt small businesses and non-profits, too, not just education.

My last comment went to the spam filter, too. Apparently if comments are long the spam filter blocks them no matter where they originate.

As to some more of your points:

1. I agree that publishers should be able to earn a profit. I don't agree that the profit should be so large. Imagine if we have something like iTunes where we could pay a fair amount for each article and get them easily.

I disagree with the assertion that a large fraction of the people with an interest in reading original literature are affluent enough to pay $30 per paper.

2. You asked about the percentage of faculty or students who are paying the rates I cited. I say that those prices effectively prevent faculty and students from using newly published materials and the articles in certain groups of journals. The RWA would expand this problem even further.

3. You seem to think that researchers don't use grant money to access scientific literature. This is an incorrect assumption for the reasons I gave above.

Actually I'm quite familiar with how research is funded and how universities administer their funding. You say that taxpayer money pays the bills in a user fee model as well. While this may be true in some part (indirects don't cover an entire library's costs, other sources contribute), you may have noticed that in my arguments I'm keen to use the word efficient. It's signifies that the user fee model makes the best use of scarce resources. Why? Because each grantee pays directly with his or her own funds. You discriminate wisely what you need and what you don't. There's extremely little waste. If journals were free to you, how many more would you "subscribe" to? 5? 10? How do you think the cost of publishing would explode when their demand increases 5 or 10 fold? The author pays model is actually a pure giveaway to publishers. In a few years, it won't be a $3000 fee for the author. It'll be $5000, or $7000 just to print more journals that sit on bookshelves. In the end, tens of millions of dollars are shifted out of desperatly thin research budgets to pay for an enormous and artificial demand premium for journals.

And you claim that high school folks need access to free journal content from some of the above mentioned journals? I would love to see the numbers. And having worked at a small biotech startup, I can tell you access was not an issue, we paid for the few articles we needed. And non-profits? Many non-profits are the same entities that are serving as the evil publishers that you vilify (ACS is your largest offender in the original post! Are you claiming they're price gouging....themselves!?) How are the harmed? If they represent patients, again, all they have to do is direct their constituency to ask the publisher for free access.

It seems you don't actually know the entire landscape, instead just choose to cherry pick individual rates (that few people actually pay) and claim them as representative of some intellectually starved scholarly community.

You still haven't addressed the point about why a private product, even if based on publicly funded research, should be free. Be sure to quote the Bayh-Dole Act while you're at it. I'm interested to see how you remedy the two.

You must have missed what I wrote.

I did not write that articles should be free. I did write that the current prices are unreasonably high.

I am concerned that all articles will be priced at $30 an article if RWA passes.

Were the journals to charge prices like $2-3 an article, we could, in good conscience, use them in student assignments. When they charge exorbitant prices like $30 an article, we cannot.

As to non-profits, if you look at the table, in general, the non-profits (ASM, AAAS, FASEB, and NAS) do charge less for their articles. ACS (the American Chemical Society) is an exception.

Sandra - why do you think articles can cost $3? If a publisher could, don't you think non-profits, who sell subscriptions to their own members, would meet this price point? Or don't you think another publisher would enter the market?

Of course, this is a self perpetuating dilemma: the community could stop submitting to Nature, Science, Cell, etc and drive down their costs, which would drive down the cost to subscribers. But everyone still submits to these choice few.

I started to write my explanation, but it looks like this will take another blog post. Look for more tomorrow.

@Just Saying:

"having worked at a small biotech startup, I can tell you access was not an issue, we paid for the few articles we needed."

Huh. Traditionally folks at small biotechs piggy back on university subscriptions - some of the folks there are still in universities, some have just left and still have a login, others still have friends there that give them access or pdfs. One thing I haven't seen is biotechs doing lots of R&D that only need a "few articles".

Your post really helped me to understand how much does it cost to get a scientific paper?. It has great details and yet it is easy to understand. That's what i was looking for. I will definitely share it with others.

Thanks for sharing.

Yes Bob, we were able to still use MIT and Harvard logins for most of our things. Only rarely did we not have access to a journal subscription. But thank you for helping to discredit Sandra's claim that most biotechs don't have access to journals.

I would love for someone to speak about the anticipated cost/demand increases that would be expected with an author pays model. It's certainly an expected economic shift. You can be sure that the open access fee charged by publishers will increase as their demand increases, until one day the research institutions will seek to put a cap on the amount that a PI can pay to publishers (putting downward pressure on the system).

I'd also like to hear folks's thought on why the non-profit publishers also are unable to meet your expectations, if big corporate publishers are to blame.

I would also like to see a rebuttal to the user-fee efficiency argument, perhaps rebutting the museum metaphor (often paid for by tax payers, but keeps operations going through a user fee system).

Also, some hard numbers on how many "individual articles" are purchased each year as a percent of total articles? How many people actually pay the prices listed above? My guess would be very few, but would love to see the data. It's a dynamic much like the individual market for health insurance - not many people actually pay those rates, but it's very hard on the ones that do. A solution (easier grouping together?) would be welcome.

These are all points at the heart of the matter, yet none have been addressed.

I think publishers have forfeited the right to earn a profit by the past behavior: http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment-n820.html See also ten most expensive journals: http://www.bibliothek.kit.edu/cms/english/most-expensive-journals%20.php

It's true that the high cost of journal articles leads some people in biotech companies like you and hibob to justify using an under-the-table fashion to get papers by finding someone with login access to a university library.

You were lucky you could use your MIT and Harvard logins for this purpose.

Some people might argue that using library resources in this way sounds like stealing.

Sandra - like others in small biotech, we actually didn't have to steal anything. But it's clear you're not familiar with start-up science. BTW - I have a couple of other posts with some key considerations in this great debate. Would appreciate seeing them posted and responded to.

Authors can choose not to publish in these expensive journals, and have to take responsibility for their decisions: http://ibiosphere.blogspot.com/2012/01/contributions-and-responsibiliti…

Wow, don't you guys have University Libraries in the US? In Australia it only costs $80 a year for an alumni, and you can access all the journals the Uni has.

There are about 1100 community colleges in the U.S. and about of the undergraduates in the U.S. attend one.

None of them have University libraries.

When I looked at the costs of downloading scientific articles last year, DeepDyve was offering $0.99 for "renting" an article for 24 hours. While you can't retain the paper this way, perhaps this approach is a step in the direction you suggest?

Alumni have access to journals in Australia? Iâve asked for just that in NZ over years and get told it's not done and that you can only access books this way. (With a lower status than other users. Keep meaning to check what the story is for Cambridge University alumni as an alternative to the local universities.)

One moreâsorry about the rain of commentsâthe initiative by the Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute includes the idea of that publication is to be directly funded by research funders. I don't know if this initiative will fly, but the ideas they present are worth reading. (See link on my name; do follow this through to Frankâs post.)

(Sandra: Iâve a comment in moderation - I included a link in it, thatâll teach me!)

Yeah, there is some access, but not everything is available electronically - but everything is available if you actually go in to the library.

All of that said, I do agree that most journals are ridiculously expensive.

@justsaying Federally funded research is not a "private product." Currently, authors are required to deposit their manuscripts with pubmed central when they are accepted for publication. One year after journal publication, they are made available to the public in pubmed central. The journals are not required to do anything or give away anything, ever. Presumably, the one-year lag time between publication and open manuscripts go some way toward protecting subscriptions and journal sales, even though the industry would prefer eternal exclusive rights. (Unfortunately, I'd note that compliance with public access regulations is spotty on the part of authors, at least in my field.)

To me the question is, "Why do journals have exclusive distribution rights for information/work that the American taxpayer has paid millions of dollars for?" and "If research doesn't get into the hands of those who can benefit from it, then why do we fund it at all?"

Sandra - I now have two comments in moderation!

@Grant & others: I tried adding you as a "trusted" commenter. Hopefully that will minimize the problems with getting caught in the spam filter.

@Jane - I would say we don't have an access problem in this country. When polled, journal access is never a cause for concern for researchers. Funding is.

Apparently you weren't around before the days of the NIH 12 month embargo was lobbied for and snuck into an appropriations bill a few years ago. PubMed is a publicly funded repository that only benefits researchers. The public could care less. Yet it was sold as "for the public." Since that time, has there been a surge in science or development? No.

Yes, the taxpayer funded the research. No argument. So should inventions, device or drugs that result from taxpayer investment be free as well? Same argument. But scientists would never agree to send a check to the US treasury for their royalties. Those are their patents. Yet, when it comes to journals, it's "everyone's" science.

The journals serve a role that costs money, as others have commented on here in this blog (other entries perhaps). The question is, who pays?

Sandra: thank you. I like the idea Iâm "trusted" :-) (Actually my own blog commenting effectively works this way full-time; first-time commenters are effectively vetted, but it's really to avoid spam.)

NickE: I can't access anything electronically, which is what Iâd like. The libraries now only take some journals electronically, photocopies chew up time and money (and trees), and in any event I use PDF copies for future reference (writing up stuff, so I can key-word search the full text, etc.)

The link for my download costs article (see 4:49pm) is on my name.

@Just saying: I think the public uses PubMed more than you know.

It would be really interesting to see the web log data.

@Grant - I don't think the "trusted commenter" setting really works. Our infrastructure is going to ... well, you know.

Sandra - uh-huh :-) Thanks for trying, though.

yea i agree with you david it didnt make sense but reading thru the article it kinda makes sense

Answer to comment number 2 : BMC like PLoS is a gold open access publishing model. The author pays for the publication. The reader has the article for free.

@just saying I'm a member of the public. I care. I'm involved in mental health advocacy and use pubmed often. Many laypeople my field have pubmed email alerts to keep an eye on research developments. There's a major gap between research and clinical practice in the area of mental health I'm most interested in. I've been working in this area for several years, since well before the NIH public access policy was implemented.

You're just dead wrong that individuals don't purchase articles for $30/each. I do several times a month. I maintain membership in two professional societies to have access to their journals. I'm not publicly funded.

Research is NOT only of use to researchers. It is hugely important to practicing clinicians and "consumers." And yes, there has been progress in pubic understanding of mental health in recent years. Research DOES have an impact on public health. It should, and would, have more of an impact if federally funded research wasn't held hostage by journals. Taypayers paid for the research. It's theirs.

Your analogy to devices doesn't hold. The federally funded research those devices are based on should be available for free, not the devices themselves. Same with journals. No one expects them to give away free hardcopies. Their subscriptions are protected by the one-year embargo. That's more than fair.

Journals make remarkably little investment to produce their product, yet enjoy large returns. Deutsche Bank recently had this to say about Reed Elsevier:

"In justifying the margins earned, the publishers, REL included, point to the highly skilled nature of the staff they employ (to pre-vet submitted papers prior to the peer review process, the support they provide to the peer review panels, including modest stipends, the complex typesetting, printing and distribution activities, including Web publishing and hosting. REL employs around 7,000 peole in its Science business as a whole. REL also argues that the high margins reflect economies of scale and the very high levels of efficiency with which they operate.

We believe the publisher adds relatively little value to the publishing process. We are not attempting to dismiss what 7,000 people at REL do for a living. We are simply observing that if the process really were as complex, costly and value-added as the publishers protest that it is, 40% margins wouldn't be available." Read more here: http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n03/mcguigan_g01.html…

I work at small liberal arts college. We do not have access to a wide range of articles including some top notch ones. Why? Cost. Articles that are available to the public are a life saver. Colleagues at community colleges also agree. We try to integrate research articles & reviews into our courses. Colleagues at public 4 year universities have similar issues.

When I was a postdoc, I would get requests from friends who moved to industry and did not have access to a number of journals. Why? Once again cost.

Content is king. The content is generated by the authors who tend to pay a fee of some sort to publish. Reviewers of the content are free. Some sort of staff is required but given how much of the work has shifted to the authors in the last two decades thanks to the digital revolution. Those cost savings have primarily increased the profit margins of companies like Elsevier.

@ponderingfool Exactly! I had to laugh at Elsevier's talk about "complex typesetting." They're not churning out Guttenberg Bibles. And web publishing and hosting is far less expensive than print. It's an industry that leverages taxpayer money and authors/reviewers who work for next-to-nothing to generate massive profits.

Gracias por escribir

Great article! You can also read my post about Open Peer Review: http://www.strategy-of-innovation.com/article-open-peer-review-is-final…

@justsaying

To start of lets all be clear on the fact that margins are not 5% but closer to or above 40% like Jane mentioned above, thats how a company like Elsevier can show over a Billion dollars in pure profits, mening not the turnover figure but the amount the company can take out and give to its owners after the costs of publishing(thats alot of money to do research for).

We also have to realise that publishing something in todays world does not require the creation of a physical item, the cost of giving someone a copy of an article doesn't cost more than the energy to transmit the information/bits, so the main cost of production is not in the distribution but the creation of the article which is mainly done by the researcher believe it or not, so the cost/benefit ratio will become better for every view and not worse as you seemed to be suggesting.

One of the real problems for increased competition is not the high cost of publishing but the researchers themselves who feel they have to publish in certain prestigious journals when alternatives do exist.

A viewer-pays model would be great if there were companies making money off of publishing their research but that is not what we have. Justsaying you must realise that most people don't feel its right to first have to pay for something than be denied it and told to pay even more if you want access to it.

Everyone so far(I haven't read ALL the comments) seems to be forgetting that the PUBLIC, i.e. the taxpayer, i.e., me, is paying (in some part) for the research. Therefore, why I am not able to view the output from this research without paying exorbitant fees? How can anyone ignore those who may not have the credentials but have an avid interest in new knowledge?

I'm the CIO of a startup accelerator (Blueseed), and one of the startups that applied to us, RockYourPaper, is working on reducing the cost of acquiring scientific journals from $30 to $5. You can find a presentation video of their idea if you search YouTube for "Rock your paper".

I'd be curious to see your thoughts.

The RockYourPaper video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-avlziKuXO4

Also, the screenshot in the blog doesn't show.

Feel free to merge this comment with my previous one.

I wanted to say a few things here (1). I am on an IPad so please acknowledge the greatest enemy is autocorrect. (2). As far as the other is concerned I agree completely with Sandra the journals are overpriced and why can't they just be cheap online copies. If the publishing cost was so high then post it online. You could merely charge users access for the site like $20/year and libraries would be like $150. That would be what normal magazines cost and because the journal doesn't even pay for the workers to research they make a reasonable rate of return. (3). End-user pp should be reasonable because what Just is saying makes no sense. I mean do you live in America? How many ppl have Science bachelor degrees who need to be kept in the loop while looking for a job or to get into a masters program?

(4). I cannot fathom Justs pov at all, I am trying to be understanding here it is just IMO I can find no common ground with what he says. (5). Even if we want to continue to print magazines and get subscriptions (how oddly unscientific what a quagmire?) why don't they make the prices accessible to govt organizations (libraries) so we can all go and look at them in the library? I have to say I have read some peer-reviewed things about triclosan and alcohol that should be public it is borderline endangering there health when it is vindictively bio accumulating in fats and nobody knows what it will do. (6). Beyond that what about the issue of science that came out about H5N1 recently? Should the public not know about that? Yet we have the darn Susan G. Komen foundation probably laundering money away from everyone. We all seem to know that "91 cents of every dollar" goes to research and we don't see enough return on that money in terms of real effective treatment of IDC do we? You're question is why is that relevant right? I will tell you because the avg person wants to see these findings in the dang journals (if there was no interest most people wouldn't care. They would just donate to a bunch of random charities and say "well I hope dem doctors gotz a clue."

I mean without scrutiny BC research so panties would be like yeah we are making progress which we are already in danger of having yet you would go further away huh? I feel like I am a smart guy but if you think you can look at some study determine its CI, "bias" coviartes and a few more things then say the data is valid I say bullspoo. The more people looking into these things the better IMO there is always someone smarter than you and we need to have them at least hAve a fighting chance to come to the table no? My friends who are doctors are always telling me they don't know what they can trust.

Would it not be better to have more people challenge Dr. Potti's findings earlier on and potentially save money, time, and lives? It just seems wrong in such a fundamental way that I don't think I could ever agree.

Let me finish by saying something probably even more controversial here. the problems we face as both a nation and a world can be solved, it takes people to do that. Forget this overcrowding crap, we need ideas that can change the world and help us proceed. We are throwing away food at record pace around the world so don't say that we will starve. It is a matter of combating these kind of problems with many brains and if we do overpopulated the planet then somebody will get the idea to make extra-terrestrial settling work. If memory serves it was Linus Pauling who said, "If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas.". Who better to have ideas then the public instead of behind closed doors in overpriced journals written in a language that is "dead,". Are we not causing our own harm?

As the stereotypical broke science-major college student, I can personally attest to the utter frustration of over-priced journal articles. I go to a small college (pop. 800) with only minimal research with grants that only come every blue moon; occasionally some random alumni makes it rich and donates money -- but that only goes to random, useless sculptures built outside of the library. The point is, my school has little money for the library to purchase journal subscriptions and, even then, only the bare-bones subscription; if any of my professors want us to read a specific article, they have to procure a personal subscription for the journal out of their own pocket.

As a science-major I spend a ridiculous amount of time writing research papers for my classes and the only acceptable sources are peer-reviewed journal articles...which I don't have ready access to. Sure, there are some articles that are tangentially related to the topic of whatever paper I'm writing at the time but they are usually fairly useless. The articles that would be perfect? Those would cost me, personally, between $30 and $50 an article. I would spend that kind of money on the twenty or so articles I need but, I kind of like eating every now and then.

So, Just Saying, please, remove your rose-colored glasses and join the rest of the world. The majority of those who want/need to read those over-priced articles don't have the money to purchase them or have access to someone who does. Also, people aren't interested in what they have to pay ridiculous prices to access; more people would interested in research journal articles if they didn't require the sacrifice of grocery, utility, or car bill payments. So, Just Saying, until you're praying that the kid who just walked out of the cafeteria not only won't eat all of his rice (because you don't dare hope for the chicken) but would also be willing to give you said leftover rice, you don't get to argue back.

interesting article, thanks!

I've just bumped into it now. I know it's been a while and I've only read the comments superficially, but have two things to say:

@Sandra - BMC works as PLoS: the author pays for the articles to be published, then the article is immediately made freely available (I worked there)

@Just: in response to your comment "How do you think the cost of publishing would explode when their demand increases 5 or 10 fold? The author pays model is actually a pure giveaway to publishers. In a few years, it won’t be a $3000 fee for the author. It’ll be $5000, or $7000 just to print more journals that sit on bookshelves."

most, if not all, Open Access journals are actually online, which means an increase in demand won´t make the prices go up. In any case, it might make them go down, if e.g. higher visits to their sites can bring them more money from advertisers, etc. (I don't know this, just a guess)

Why does it cost millions to access publicly funded research papers? Blame the paywall

Canadian universities struggle to pay for access to their own research reports as publishers profit.

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This is an excerpt from Second Opinion, a weekly roundup of eclectic and under-the-radar health and medical science news emailed to subscribers every Saturday morning. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by  clicking here

Canada's academic librarians are cheering from the sidelines now that the University of California has cancelled its subscriptions with the academic publishing giant Elsevier.

It was a clash of titans as the largest public university in the U.S. pushed back against a multi-million dollar paywall blocking open access to the world's scientific knowledge.

"People were following it very closely," said Mary-Jo Romaniuk, librarian and vice-provost at the University of Calgary. "This may be the start of things to come."

• SECOND OPINION Canada has found the key to lowering drug prices, but it won't be used any time soon

Elsevier is one of the largest academic publishers in the world, with prestigious journals including The Lancet and Cell.

It leads the "big five" group that also includes Springer Nature , Wiley , Taylor & Francis and Sage . Altogether, they publish more than 11,000 journals.

Researchers write for free

Academic publishing is based on an unusual business arrangement where much of the content and the labour is provided free by the customer.

It works this way: Publicly funded scientists do the research, write the papers and act as peer reviewers for their colleagues' work without remuneration from publishing companies.

Then those companies charge universities and other institutions millions of dollars in subscription fees for access to the same published research. And those subscription fees increase every year.

Last year, Canadian university libraries paid more than $300 million for subscriptions to research journals, including those containing papers generated by their own professors.

It's become so expensive that some libraries have cancelled journals, leaving their students and faculty without access to some of that research.

It creates a bizarre situation for students at the University of Calgary, who can't access the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies ( CJLACS ) even though it's published next door at the University of British Columbia.

In order to keep publishing, the journal was forced to sign on with Taylor & Francis where it was bundled with other journals and sold as a package. The University of Calgary had to drop that package to cut costs.

"There's almost no public funding for journals through universities anymore. So the publishing world has basically been forced into the commercial sphere," said Jessica Stites Mor, the editor in chief of CJLACS. She edits the journal for free. None of the authors or peer reviewers are paid either.

• SECOND OPINION Teen vaping in Canada has taken a 'worrisome' turn

"We're creating right now incentives in the research system so that these for-profit publishers are increasing their importance," said Vincent Larivière, a professor of information science at the University of Montreal. "These organizations make profit margins around 40 per cent.

"There is certainly material out there that suggests that there's excessive profits being taken," said Romaniuk.

Libraries forced to choose 

Academic libraries don't have much wiggle room either. Even though their budgets are tight, they are required to provide access to the journals their students and faculty need for research.

That means they have less money to buy books. And that hits some departments especially hard.

I think we've reached a point where the model is just unsustainable. - Vincent Larivière, professor of information science, University of Montreal

"History, the humanities, and English, those kinds of disciplines are still big users of books," said Nicole Eva, librarian at the University of Lethbridge. "But as we have less money available for books then they're disproportionately impacted."

Last week's move by the University of California is the latest in a series of efforts to break the knowledge monopoly. German and Swedish universities have also cancelled subscriptions with Elsevier.

"I think we've reached a point where the model is just unsustainable," said Larivière. "The money that we're spending on these for-profit publishers is money that does not stay in the research system, that does not stay in the university system and is actually not used to do research."

"Is there a way out? I think in Canada we are working together to look at different open-access models," said Romaniuk, adding there is one major problem.

"How do you deal with cost of publishing if you give it away for free?" The answer? Scientists pay several thousand dollars to have their research published on open-access forums.

"We already work for free so there's no less amount of money they could pay us," said Stites Mor. "You can't get cheaper than free."

Increasingly, public funding agencies are requiring scientists to make their research freely available as a condition for receiving grants.

All three of Canada's major research funding agencies — the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) — have an open access requirement. Any research funded since 2015 must be freely available within 12 months.

So far, CIHR estimates that about 60 per cent of its researchers have complied.

To read the entire Second Opinion newsletter every Saturday morning, please  subscribe .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Medical science

Kelly Crowe is a health and science reporter, who previously spent more than 30 years reporting on a wide range of national news and current affairs for CBC News.

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How much does it cost to publish a paper in a journal

Publication Plays an important role in every researcher’s carrier. if you are a Ph.D. student or doing your master’s or bachelor’s, then as per the University norms, you need to publish your research paper in a good journal. Here in this article, we are going to discuss How much does it cost to publish a paper in a journal .

How much does it cost to publish a paper in a journal?

Before proceeding let us discuss how the Journal operates and its finances. As we know that every organization and institution needs the funds to operate. The Journal publication organization has some costs to operate.

To operate the publication most journal publishers follows the two type of model of publication

1. Open access Method

2. Subscription-based method.

Publication model of Scholarly Journals

The subscription-based model is a very old model and many publishers adopted this for many years now. But the Open access model is new to the world and becoming popular very rapidly.

So, let us understand why is it getting popular so fast?

In the Subscription-based model if any reader wants to read the published article then he/she has to pay some charges to download the paper or to read the paper for future research.

But in case of open access , the readers can download, read and cite the paper completely free. So the readers and researchers prefer the articles which do not cost them. Due to this, the Open Access model is getting popular.

Now there are two types of models in which the journals that publish the paper from authors can have an income. 

As we discussed now The first model is known as the open-access model . In this model, the author of the paper has to pay the publication fees. But now some publishers do not use the Subscription-based model rather they call it Green Open access .

Let us understand what is Gold Open Access and Green Open Access Journals

Must read: How to publish a paper in International Journal

Gold open access

According to Elsevier in this model of publication, the journal article will be freely available for everyone after publication. The publishing costs are covered by the author or by their institution/funding body/society on their behalf, typically in the form of an Article Publishing Charge (APC) or other types of fees.

Elsevier’s APCs range between   $150 and c$6000 US Dollars excluding tax, depending on the journal, with prices clearly displayed on the Article Publishing Charge (APC) price list and on journal homepages. Other than these journals you can find journals that charge between 20 USD and to 200USD if it’s a Peer review journals.

Other Publishers like Springer nature, Willey, IEEE, and Hindawi also followed the same.

Must read: How to know if a journal is indexed

Green open access

In this model, the authors do not need to pay any additional charges for the publication. The publication costs are covered by subscriptions. The reader will pay when he/she wants to download the paper and read it.

Refer to Elsevier Open access policy here

Check here the Springer’s Open access policy here

IEEE Publication charges

Here is the tentative cost to publish a paper in a journal

SCI Indexed Journal: 500USd to 6000USD per article

Scopus Indexed Journal: 200USD to 1500USD per article

Web of Science Indexed Journal: 200USD to 1500USD per article

ABDC Indexed Journal: 200USD to 1000USD per article

Peer reviewed and Google Scholar Indexed Journals: 20 USD to 300USD per article

UGC Care(for India only-Group-1)listed Journal: 50USD to 300USD per article

Other reputed Indexing like Pubmed, IJIFACTOR, GARUDA, DOAJ, EI Compemdex, CNIK Indexed Journal: 100USD to 1000USD per article.

Why is open access so expensive?

Because of the Publication cost, Open access journals are expensive. But it’s now it is widely accepted that the Open access journal is the future of the publication . The researchers love to read the journal article available freely and cite them.

What is the problem with open access?

Generally, people consider the journals which charge APC from authors during publication are fake journals or predatory journals. But that is not true people should understand that the journals that are publishing their papers need some source of income to sustain the journal and to maintain the journal quality.

As here the author needs to pay before publication some people think it’s easy to pay and publish. But it’s not true.  There might be some predatory journals that take money to publish but most Journal publishers follow the Global standard of Journal publication. You need to find good journals to publish your research paper.

To know more about the publication fees of any organization and institution one should always visit the website of that organization.

Must read: How to search Scopus indexed journals

Is it good to publish in open-access journals?

Absolutely yes!! As we discussed earlier in this article the researchers love to read the articles which available freely. So, the chance of getting a higher impact on your paper after publication. Most reputed Journal publishers are now having Gold open-access Journal publications. This means they charge APC from the author to get the paper published.

Here is the list you can check

• Elsevier: https://www.elsevier.com/open-access/open-access-journals
• Springer Nature: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books
• Willey:   https://authorservices.wiley.com/open-research/open-access/browse-journals.html
• Frontiersin : https://www.frontiersin.org/
• MDPI: https://www.mdpi.com/
• Cambridge: https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/open-access
• Hindawi : https://www.hindawi.com/journals/
• IEEE: https://open.ieee.org

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https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/leading-a-research-project/applying-for-research-funding/costing-and-pricing-a-research-proposal

This page has been reproduced from the Vitae website (www.vitae.ac.uk). Vitae is dedicated to realising the potential of researchers through transforming their professional and career development.

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Costing and pricing a research proposal

Costing and pricing  are the parts of the proposal development process which most often strikes fear into the hearts of principal investigators, with some justification. However all those who have been awarded research funding will have gone through this process, so there is plently of experience and advice to draw on and for most researchers there will be support from the central research or finance office. 

Why costing AND pricing?

There is a clear difference between costing and pricing. 

• The cost of a piece of research is how much it will cost your institution for you to undertake the research in question. In the UK this amount is calculated and described as the full economic cost (fEC). Details of the fEC are provided below
• The price is how much you request (or, rather, eventually get) from your funder.

You may be surprised to know that in almost all cases in the UK the price is lower than the cost. (The reason for this is historical and partly explained by what is known as the   dual support system ) . So the key issue for a PI is to be sure that the funds awarded will in fact cover the actual costs of the research, and this is a question that  your research office should be able to answer and reassure you about. If you have not yet spoken to your research office then now really is the time! You should find help and internal systems available to make all the necessary calculations for your proposal. If you really do need to know how to do it yourself then there are many guides and training courses available (for example, visit  ARMA or BUFDG ). Your own institution may offer training or guidance.

Full Economic Costing

All UK Universities are required to use a full economic costing (fEC) methodology that estimates the full cost of undertaking a piece of research; this is then used to inform the amount of money (normally less than the fEC) that will be requested from the funder.

The principles of Full Economic Costing (fEC) in the UK are detailed on the   JCPSG website  - below is a brief overview.

When costing research activities (ie project proposals) three main cost elements are considered:

• Directly Incurred (DI) costs, i.e. those that can be explicitly identified and recorded against a project. Examples are: a research assistant working full time on the project, equipment bought for exclusive use by the project, travel directly related to the project, materials bought for the project, etc.
• Directly Allocated (DA) costs, i.e. those that are attributable to a project, but are estimated rather than directly recorded. Examples are: the 10% of your time that you expect to spend on the project, a fraction of pool staff that you might draw on, your use of space in the building
• Indirect (Ind) costs, i.e. all the other costs of running your institution that are not directly attributable to the project, but nonetheless need to be paid for. Examples are the library, HR, finance, the vice chancellor's office, IT infrastructure.

The example below shows a simple costing based on these three elements.  Methods for calculating DA and Ind costs in particular are complrex and subject to change from time to time, so not provided here. You should consult within your institution for details of these methods should you be intending to draft your own project costing.

This is a simplified example to give an overview of Full Economic Costing (fEC) and is not meant to reflect accurate costs. You should always consult your research office and use the IT tool(s) that they provide/recommend.

If you are new to full economic costing then you may well be surprised that the cost of a 3 year project with a research assistant plus a half a day a week technician and 1 day a week of the PI's time costs over a quarter of a million pounds.

Please note that the actual costs will need to be calculated to the nearest penny (or pound depending on the proposed funded) and that there are many other items that you may need to consider.

Only when the   fEC has been calculated are you in a position to consider the pricing - that is, how much money should you ask for?

Some research funders/schemes stipulate a non-negotiable proportion of the fEC, which is helpful. Examples are:

•  UK Research Councils ( 80% of fEC)
• EC Framework Projects (75% of eligible costs [not of fEC])
• UK Charities (direct costs only)
• UK Government departments (100% of fEC).

However, these proportions can be subject to specific exceptions and rules for the particular funding schemes that you are interested in so you should always check the precise offer.

Other funders (mainly industrial and commercial bodies) will pay what they think the research is worth - this might be above or below the fEC and may depend on issues such as intellectual property rights. You should always consult your research office when pricing for non standard funders.

Before you approach a potential research funder you should consider your internal approval proce ss.

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How Much Does It Cost to Write a Research Paper? (Answered)

by  Antony W

July 6, 2022

A research paper project is often too long to complete in a short time. If you have many assignments to complete but don’t have enough time for the research project, it might make sense to seek for academic writing help. But how much does it cost to write a research paper?

The average cost for writing a research paper is $15 to $40 per page. However, the cost varies based on a number of factors, including spacing, number of pages, assignment briefs, the writing service provider, and the assigned deadline.

Some writing agencies offer some type of coupon codes on an occasional basis to enable students who need help with their writing to get their research paper done at an affordable price.

In this post, we’ll look at the factors that determine exactly how much it would cost you to have your research paper written by someone other than yourself.

The information in this guide should help you make the decision on whether to hire academic writing services   or write the research paper yourself.

How Much Does It Cost to Write a Research Paper? 

The following are the factors that determine how much it would cost you to have a research paper written:

1. Marketing Competition Highly Influences Research Paper Writing Cost

We can't possibly count the number of essay writing service   websites available on the internet.

The writing industry is booming, new writing website go live on the web every month, and freelancers sell research paper writing on platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer.

Competition in the research paper industry has intensified owing to this trend and the availability of many writing services has a significant impact on how much you’ll spend to write a research paper.

What's intriguing about this trend is the widespread availability of low-cost research paper writing service . However, whether you receive the kind of service you genuinely deserve is a different thing altogether.

Writing services that charge between $30 and $70 per page tend to invest a lot of time in research, writing, and editing to give you the best value for your top dollars.

To be clear, cheap research paper writing service doesn’t mean low quality results.

Help for Assessment is an excellent example of an affordable yet professional research paper writing service.

So if you need help with your research paper project but don't have a lot of money to pay for the most expensive writing services, you can count on us to help you get the work done.

2. Discount Offers Lower the Cost to Write a Research Paper

At certain times of the year, certain businesses prefer to provide limited-time promotions to new and returning consumers.

During such times, you’ll save a portion of your money and still get a high quality research paper done for you. More often than not, many academic writing services provide the offer in the form of coupon codes with fix time limit.

At Help for Assessment, we prefer to do things differently. Instead of offering you a limited-time promo code, we'll give you a 30% discount on your order if you're new to Help for Assessment.

Furthermore, we acknowledge that some students are on a shoestring budget.

If that's the case, contact us via chat and we'll set up a bespoke payment plan that will allow you to get the expert assistance you need to finish your project on time.

3. The Cost to Write a Research Paper Varies Based on Deadlines

When it comes to having your research paper written by a professional writing service, time management is a critical consideration.

Primarily, you want to finish your paper on time so you don't miss your instructor's deadline.

But you need to understand that the project's cost is directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to complete it.

Let’s say you have 7 days to complete a complex research paper and you hire Help for Assessment to help you with the assignment.

Our team will treat this as an urgent assignment and devote to it the time and attention it requires.

Typically, this entails delegating the task to a writing staff capable of handling urgent projects, regardless of how difficult the subject is.

Urgent research papers require a lot of work in a short span of time and they will therefore cost you more money to have written compared to assignments that have longer deadlines.

4. Level of Education

The level of education is yet another factor that determines how much you will pay to have a research paper written.

Again, each writing agency has its own cost chart to represent this, and therefore the overall cost will vary significantly.

With this respect, you will pay less for a college-level research paper and a bit more for the PhD level dissertation.

5. Length and Spacing of the Research Paper

The length of a research paper assignment refers to how long the paper should be in terms of the number of pages, with more pages likely to cost you more.

Also, you have factor in the type of spacing you would like used as a formatting for your research paper.

By the current academic standards, a one-page, double-spaced assignment is 275 words and a single-space paper has twice the number of words, which is 550 words. 

Please check out calculator to determine the cost of writing a research paper with respect to the type of spacing.

6. Terms and Conditions of Service

The cost of writing a research paper also depends on the terms and conditions that an academic writing service has in place.

Some services indicate that their base price is the final cut and not negotiable. Some give you the option to discuss a custom pricing plan depending on your current situation and the complexity of the work. 

At Help for Assessment, we charge a base pricing point per page based on our terms of service, but keep in mind that the price per page is subject to change based on the level of education and the length of the assignment.

Also, we understand that the tough economic times may hinder you from paying a lot of money for a research paper assignment, which is why we’re more flexible with our pricing plan.

All you have to do is get in touch with us and we’ll see how we can be of help to you.

About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

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Got tinnitus a device that tickles the tongue helps this musician find relief.

Allison Aubrey

After using the Lenire device for an hour each day for 12 weeks, Victoria Banks says her tinnitus is "barely noticeable." David Petrelli/Victoria Banks hide caption

After using the Lenire device for an hour each day for 12 weeks, Victoria Banks says her tinnitus is "barely noticeable."

Imagine if every moment is filled with a high-pitched buzz or ring that you can't turn off.

More than 25 million adults in the U.S., have a condition called tinnitus, according to the American Tinnitus Association. It can be stressful, even panic-inducing and difficult to manage. Dozens of factors can contribute to the onset of tinnitus, including hearing loss, exposure to loud noise or a viral illness.

There's no cure, but there are a range of strategies to reduce the symptoms and make it less bothersome, including hearing aids, mindfulness therapy , and one newer option – a device approved by the FDA to treat tinnitus using electrical stimulation of the tongue.

The device has helped Victoria Banks, a singer and songwriter in Nashville, Tenn., who developed tinnitus about three years ago.

"The noise in my head felt like a bunch of cicadas," Banks says. "It was terrifying." The buzz made it difficult for her to sing and listen to music. "It can be absolutely debilitating," she says.

Shots - Health News

Tinnitus bothers millions of americans. here's how to turn down the noise.

Banks tried taking dietary supplements , but those didn't help. She also stepped up exercise, but that didn't bring relief either. Then she read about a device called Lenire, which was approved by the FDA in March 2023. It includes a plastic mouthpiece with stainless steel electrodes that electrically stimulate the tongue. It is the first device of its kind to be approved for tinnitus.

"This had worked for other people, and I thought I'm willing to try anything at this point," Banks recalls.

She sought out audiologist Brian Fligor, who treats severe cases of tinnitus in the Boston area. Fligor was impressed by the results of a clinical trial that found 84% of participants who tried Lenire experienced a significant reduction in symptoms. He became one of the first providers in the U.S. to use the device with his patients. Fligor also served on an advisory panel assembled by the company who developed it.

"A good candidate for this device is somebody who's had tinnitus for at least three months," Fligor says, emphasizing that people should be evaluated first to make sure there's not an underlying medical issue.

Tinnitus often accompanies hearing loss, but Victoria Banks' hearing was fine and she had no other medical issue, so she was a good candidate.

Banks used the device for an hour each day for 12 weeks. During the hour-long sessions, the electrical stimulation "tickles" the tongue, she says. In addition, the device includes a set of headphones that play a series of tones and ocean-wave sounds.

The device works, in part, by shifting the brain's attention away from the buzz. We're wired to focus on important information coming into our brains, Fligor says. Think of it as a spotlight at a show pointed at the most important thing on the stage. "When you have tinnitus and you're frustrated or angry or scared by it, that spotlight gets really strong and focused on the tinnitus," Fligor says.

"It's the combination of what you're feeling through the nerves in your tongue and what you're hearing through your ears happening in synchrony that causes the spotlight in your brain to not be so stuck on the tinnitus," Fligor explains.

A clinical trial found 84% of people who used the device experienced a significant reduction in symptoms. Brian Fligor hide caption

A clinical trial found 84% of people who used the device experienced a significant reduction in symptoms.

"It unsticks your spotlight" and helps desensitize people to the perceived noise that their tinnitus creates, he says.

Banks says the ringing in her ears did not completely disappear, but now it's barely noticeable on most days.

"It's kind of like if I lived near a waterfall and the waterfall was constantly going," she says. Over time, the waterfall sound fades out of consciousness.

"My brain is now focusing on other things," and the buzz is no longer so distracting. She's back to listening to music, writing music, and performing music." I'm doing all of those things," she says.

When the buzz comes back into focus, Banks says a refresher session with the device helps.

A clinical trial found that 84% of people who tried Lenire , saw significant improvements in their condition. To measure changes, the participants took a questionnaire that asked them to rate how much tinnitus was impacting their sleep, sense of control, feelings of well-being and quality of life. After 12 weeks of using the device, participants improved by an average of 14 points.

"Where this device fits into the big picture, is that it's not a cure-all, but it's quickly become my go-to," for people who do not respond to other ways of managing tinnitus, Fligor says.

One down-side is the cost. Banks paid about $4,000 for the Lenire device, and insurance doesn't cover it. She put the expense on her credit card and paid it off gradually.

Fligor hopes that as the evidence of its effectiveness accumulates, insurers will begin to cover it. Despite the cost, more than 80% of participants in the clinical trial said they would recommend the device to a friend with tinnitus.

But, it's unclear how long the benefits last. Clinical trials have only evaluated Lenire over a 1-year period. "How durable are the effects? We don't really know yet," says audiologist Marc Fagelson, the scientific advisory committee chair of the American Tinnitus Association. He says research is promising but there's still more to learn.

Fagelson says the first step he takes with his patients is an evaluation for hearing loss. Research shows that hearing aids can be an effective treatment for tinnitus among people who have both tinnitus and hearing loss, which is much more common among older adults. An estimated one-third of adults 65 years of age and older who have hearing loss, also have tinnitus.

"We do see a lot of patients, even with very mild loss, who benefit from hearing aids," Fagelson says, but in his experience it's about 50-50 in terms of improving tinnitus. Often, he says people with tinnitus need to explore options beyond hearing aids.

Bruce Freeman , a scientist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says he's benefitted from both hearing aids and Lenire. He was fitted for the device in Ireland where it was developed, before it was available in the U.S.

Freeman agrees that the ringing never truly disappears, but the device has helped him manage the condition. He describes the sounds that play through the device headphones as very calming and "almost hypnotic" and combined with the tongue vibration, it's helped desensitize him to the ring.

Freeman – who is a research scientist – says he's impressed with the results of research, including a study published in Nature, Scientific Reports that points to significant improvements among clinical trial participants with tinnitus.

Freeman experienced a return of his symptoms when he stopped using the device. "Without it the tinnitus got worse," he says. Then, when he resumed use, it improved.

Freeman believes his long-term exposure to noisy instruments in his research laboratory may have played a role in his condition, and also a neck injury from a bicycle accident that fractured his vertebra. "All of those things converged," he says.

Freeman has developed several habits that help keep the high-pitched ring out of his consciousness and maintain good health. "One thing that does wonders is swimming," he says, pointing to the swooshing sound of water in his ears. "That's a form of mindfulness," he explains.

When it comes to the ring of tinnitus, "it comes and goes," Freeman says. For now, it has subsided into the background, he told me with a sense of relief. "The last two years have been great," he says – a combination of the device, hearing aids and the mindfulness that comes from a swim.

This story was edited by Jane Greenhalgh

• ringing in ears
• hearing loss

Money latest: State pensions 'could be in doubt for future generations'

A pensions expert has told Money that if he was 20 today, he would be "sceptical" about the promise of a state pension. Read this and all the latest consumer and personal finance news below, plus leave a comment in the box.

Tuesday 30 April 2024 07:41, UK

• State pensions could be in doubt for future generations, expert warns
• Higher food prices and shortages warning - as new Brexit checks begin
• Royal Mail pausing £5 charge for post carrying counterfeit stamps
• Tesco offering up to £50 in points through 'Clubcard Challenges' campaign

Essential reads

• Swap rates are the reason mortgage rates are rising - what are they?
• Gameboys, Sindy dolls, designer shoes, 1950s furniture: The items in your attic that could be worth a small fortune
• Money Problem : 'A company isn't abiding by written warranty for dodgy building work - what can I do?'  
• '£2,000 landed in my account' - The people who say they're manifesting riches
• Train strikes in May - everything you need to know

Ask a question or make a comment

By Jess Sharp , Money team

We first came across Tom McPhail when he posted this on X... 

The pensions expert appeared to be suggesting state pensions were at risk of disappearing.  

After speaking to him on the phone, he confirmed that was exactly his concern, warning something needed to be done sooner rather than later to avoid a "catastrophic" situation.  

He described state pensions as a social contract – each generation pays taxes and national insurance, which funds the pensions of today's older people, and they hope the following generation will do the same for them.

But with population growth slowing, there's a worry there may simply not be enough people to keep the system afloat in the future.  

"There's a significant demographic shift going on in the UK. It started before the Second World War, cohorts of people born in the 1930s have been experiencing significantly longer lives than was the case prior to that, so people now in their 80s are living quite a lot longer," he said. 

"But at the same time, we've got fewer children coming through. And so this exacerbates the shift in the age of the population."

He said if he was 20 today, he would be "sceptical" about the promise of a state pension because he isn't sure how it's going to be paid for.  

At the moment, the state pension system costs around £120bn a year and more than half of retired people rely on it to make up at least 50% of their income, he added.  

Over the next 50 years, Tom predicts the proportion of GDP the state spends on older people will increase from around 16% to 25%.  

"I hesitate to use the word unsustainable, but it will certainly start to look challenging," he said.  

"If we suddenly switched off the state pension or significantly reduced it, people would be in trouble, so the government can’t do that. 

"You can't keep on progressively ratcheting up a more and more generous state pension. The costs of state pensions is going to become increasingly difficult for the younger cohorts to bear."

He pointed to a few ways to potentially salvage the state pension – policy change, more babies being born or people working until they are in their 70s.  

"Politicians are going to have to make decisions about how to get out of this kind of political bind," Tom added. 

"Time and time again it's just kick the can down the road on the pension question, just put a sticking plaster on it and let the next government deal with the problem. 

"You can't keep doing that. So I would really like to see, on the other side of this forthcoming general election... whoever's in power, in collaboration with whoever's in opposition, to just really open it up to some honest conversations about where the demographics are going to take us." 

He does note there is one piece of good news: "This happens quite slowly, so we do have time on our side." 

Basically, swap rates dictate the pricing of fixed-rate mortgages.

Lenders, such as banks and building societies, borrow in order to lend.

They borrow from financial markets and often these transactions are made using Sterling Overnight Index Average (SONIA) swap rates, which can move around.

By contrast, most domestic mortgages are set on what is known as a "term" rate – in other words, the borrower knows how much interest they will be paying for a set period of time.

To avoid a situation where the SONIA rate goes above the rate it is charging borrowers, which would leave the bank or building society lending at a loss, the lender will seek to enter a "swap" arrangement which protects them from such a situation.

Under such agreements, two parties exchange cash flows with each other. The lending bank will swap the variable payments it may make to service a mortgage (which is fixed to the SONIA rate) for payments at a fixed rate. This insulates the lending bank from unexpected increases in the SONIA rate.

Once a deal is struck based on the swap rate, mortgage providers set their fixed deals for customers, with their own profit margin priced in.

How are swap rates decided?

Swap rates are based on what the markets think will happen to interest rates in the future.

When they go up, so do the rates being offered on the high street, as we have seen in the last week or two amid uncertainty over whether forecasts for a summer base rate cut are accurate.

Read other entries in our Basically... series:

Train drivers will stage a fresh wave of strikes and overtime bans in May, causing disruption to the rail network.

The strikes are part of a long-running dispute over pay.

Members of Aslef union at 16 rail companies will walk out on different days from 7 to 9 May. Additionally, all members will refuse to work any overtime from 6 May to 11 May.

Here is a full list of the services affected by strikes and when.

Rail strike dates

Tuesday 7 May

Strikes will affect c2c, Greater Anglia, GTR Great Northern Thameslink, Southeastern, Southern, Gatwick Express and South Western Railway.

Wednesday 8 May

Strikes will affect Avanti West Coast, Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Great Western Railway and West Midlands Trains.

Thursday 9 May

Strikes will affect LNER, Northern Trains and TransPennine Express.

Overtime ban dates

From Monday 6 May to Saturday 11 May union members will not work overtime.

Overtime bans, an action short of a strike, means some services may not be running or may be reduced as drivers refuse to work their rest days.

People are advised to check before they travel, as some areas may have no service.

How do strikes and overtime bans affect services?

Strikes tend to mean services on lines where members are participating are extremely affected or cancelled entirely, whereas overtime bans often lead to reduced services.

How can I stay in the loop?

You can use the National Rail's  journey planner  to see when trains are running.

Be sure to check it close to when you plan to travel, as it will be updated regularly.

Why are the strikes still happening?

Aslef rejected a two-year offer of 4% in 2022 and another 4% this year, saying this was way below inflation, and was linked to changes in terms and conditions.

Aslef says train drivers have not had an increase in salary for five years, since their last pay deals expired in 2019.

Royal Mail is temporarily waiving a £5 charge for unsuspecting members of the public who receive post sent with a fake stamp.

The company said it was developing a new scanner in its app which will let customers scan stamp barcodes and check whether they are recognised counterfeits.

While this takes place, the £5 charge for people who receive the post will be paused, Royal Mail said.

It added that it would work to ensure the sender of items posted with counterfeit stamps are charged instead of the recipient where possible.

Royal Mail chief commercial officer Nick Landon said new security measures alongside its barcoded stamps have "led to a 90% reduction" in counterfeits.

"We want our customers to buy stamps with confidence and always recommend that customers only purchase stamps from post offices and other reputable high street retailers," he said.

Tesco Clubcard users have the chance to secure up to £50 in points over the next six weeks as part of its new "Clubcard Challenge" initiative.

Three million Clubcard holders will be invited to take part in the campaign. If they accept, they'll receive 20 challenges that Tesco says will be "personalised just for them" - of which they can choose up to 10 to complete.

The supermarket giant said it was working with AI company EagleAI to offer the "hyper-personalised" promotion.

Challenges will involve spending a certain amount on a range, such as its BBQ food offering, or type of product, such as plant-based food. Customers who complete the "challenges" will be handed extra Clubcard points.

Lizzie Reynolds, group membership and loyalty director at Tesco, said the company was "very excited" to see how its customers responded.

Let us know what you think of this in the comments box above.

Strikes at Heathrow Airport are taking place over the next few weeks, with the first one already under way.

Staff at the UK's biggest airport are set to walk out during the early bank holiday in May, with their union warning planes could be "delayed, disrupted and grounded".

Click here to find out when all the strikes are, what disruption is expected and which airlines are affected...

The average price paid for comprehensive motor insurance rose 1% in the first quarter of the year, according to industry data indicating an easing in the steep rises seen last year.

The latest tracker issued by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) showed a 1% increase on the previous three months to £635.

That was despite the average claim paid rising 8% to reach a record of £4,800, the body said.

The ABI said the disparity showed that its members were "absorbing" additional costs and not passing them on.

Nevertheless, the average policy was still 33%, or £157, higher between January and March compared to the same period last year.

Read the full story here ...

Getir , the grocery delivery app, has abandoned a European expansion that is set to result in the loss of around 1,500 jobs in the UK.

Sky News had previously revealed that the Turkey-based company, which means "to bring" in Turkish, had  successfully raised money from investors to fund its withdrawals  from the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

It had already departed other countries including Italy and Spain.

The exits were prompted by growing losses linked to the company's rapid expansion.

Waitrose is launching an exclusive range of products with popular chef Yotam Ottolenghi today. 

The Israeli-British chef is famous for his Middle Eastern and Mediterranean-inspired food, and has worked with the supermarket to release products including a pasta sauce, spice blend and shawarma marinade. 

It is the first time Ottolenghi has partnered with a supermarket in such a way. 

The full range will be available in Waitrose shops, Waitrose.com and Ottolenghi.co.uk from today, while a selection of products will be available from the supermarket on Deliveroo and Uber Eats. 

An introductory 20% off offer is being launched until 18 June. 

The range includes: 

• Ottolenghi Miso Pesto 165g (£4)
• Ottolenghi Kalamata Olive & Harissa Sauce  350g (£4.50)
• Ottolenghi Pomegranate, Rose & Preserved Lemon Harissa 170g (£5)
• Ottolenghi Green Harissa 170g (£5)
• Ottolenghi Aleppo & Other Chillies Blend (£3.95)
• Ottolenghi Sweet & Smokey Blend (£3.95)
• Ottolenghi Citrus & Spice Blend (£3.95)
• Ottolenghi Red Chilli Sauce (£4.50)
• Ottolenghi Shawarma Marinade (£4)

Ottolenghi said he had "always been super eager to get our flavours onto people's dinner plates nationwide, not just in London, without having to cook it from scratch every single time". 

He added: "I hate to admit it but the pasta sauce already features heavily in my home kitchen, when no one is looking."

The cost of bread, biscuits and beer could increase this year due to the impact of the unusually wet autumn and winter on UK harvests.

Research suggests that production of wheat, oats, barley and oilseed rape could drop by four million tonnes (17.5%) compared with 2023.

The wet weather has resulted in lower levels of planting, while flooding and storms over winter caused farmers more losses.

The predictions come just as the rate of price increases on many food items begins to slow as inflation falls.

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) analysed forecasts from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHBD) and government yield data.

It found a "real risk" of beer, biscuits and bread becoming more expensive if the poor harvest increases costs for producers, according to its lead analyst Tom Lancaster.

Beer prices could be affected because the wet weather is still disrupting the planting of spring crops such as barley, the ECIU said.

And potatoes might also see a price hike in the coming months, with growers warning of a major shortage in the autumn due to persistent wet weather.

By Emily Mee , Money team

When I think about the toys of my childhood - my pink Barbie car, my Gameboy Micro, my collection of Pokemon cards - I can't tell you where they went. 

Maybe they were shipped off to a charity shop at some point... Or perhaps they're in the attic? 

While my hot pink Gameboy Micro is lost to the void of time (or a cardboard box somewhere in my mum's house), other versions of it are selling on eBay for £100 or more. 

And there are Pokemon cards selling for anything from a tenner to hundreds or even thousands of pounds. 

It's possible you also have items at home that are a collector's dream. 

Gumtree says its collectables category is already proving to be a "hotbed of activity" this year, with listings up 22% in 2024 so far. 

Its most popular items include rare stamps, coins, war memorabilia and Pokemon cards. 

Spring is often the most popular time for buying and selling collectibles, with demand spiking in March and April. 

We've enlisted the help of TV presenter and collectables expert Tracy Martin to give an idea of what could make you an easy buck. 

Old toys making a 'retro comeback'

Tracy explains that while trends change, vintage toys tend to stand the test of time. 

"Toys are always going to be popular because they tap into nostalgia, our childhood memories," she says, explaining that adults like to buy the toys they used to have. 

Perhaps you were into cars, and you've got some old diecast vehicles from Matchbox, Corgi or Dinky Toys. 

A quick look on toy auction site Vectis.co.uk shows a Corgi Toys "James Bond" Aston Martin estimated to sell for between £600 to £700 - while others are likely to fetch £50 to £60. 

Sindy dolls are also particularly sought after - particularly those from the 1960s - and Barbie dolls from the 1990s too. 

Pokemon cards have seen a "massive surge", Tracy says, with people paying "thousands and thousands of pounds" for good unopened sets. 

She's even seen examples of people paying £16,000 upwards. 

Another up-and-coming market is games consoles, such as Gameboys, vintage consoles and PlayStations, which are making a "retro comeback".

What else could earn you some cash?

Tracy says there's currently a surge in people wanting to buy "mid century" furniture, which is dated to roughly 1945 to 1965 and typically uses clean lines and has a timeless feel. 

Vintage Danish furniture is sought after, particularly tables and chairs with good designer names such as Wegner, Verner Panton and Arne Jacobsen.

Prices range from the low hundreds into the thousands.

People will also look out for vintage framed prints by artists such as Tretchikoff, J.H. Lynch and Shabner - these can range in price from £50 upwards to a few hundred pounds plus. 

Vintage clothes, handbags and shoes can fetch a good price - but you can also invest in modern pieces. 

Tracy suggests looking out for good classic designs with high-end designer names such as Gucci, Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton. 

Modern designers such as Irregular Choice, Vendula and Lulu Guinness are also collected. 

Collaborations with designers and celebrities can do well as they're often limited edition. 

For example, Tracy says the H&M x Paco Rabanne maxi silver sequin dress retailed at £279.99 last year but now sells for in excess of £600. 

When it comes to shoes, "the quirkier the design the better" - so look out for brands such as Irregular Choice and Joe Browns. 

Converse and Dr Martens collaborations also do well, depending on the design and condition, as well as Adidas and Nike limited edition trainers. 

What's the best way to sell?  

Tracy recommends to always research before selling your items, as they might perform better on different platforms and you can also get an idea of how much they sell for. 

For example, Vinted can be a good place to sell clothes and shoes, while other items might be better suited for sale on Gumtree, eBay or Etsy. 

Tracy's favourite way to sell is through auction - especially if there are specialist sales. 

Vectis is one of the biggest and most popular for toy selling. 

Interests in different periods and items can go up and down, but for the time being vintage pieces from the 1980s and 90s are popular. 

How much you'll be able to get from an item often takes into account its rarity, condition, whether it reflects a period in time, and if it's got a good name behind it. 

You never know - you might be sitting on a treasure trove. 

Annual mortgage repayments have increased by up to 70% since 2021, according to new data from Zoopla .

The biggest impact of rising interest rates has been in southern England where house prices are higher.

Across the South West, South East and East of England, the annual mortgage cost for an average home is £5,000 higher than previously. This rises to £7,500 in London.

But the universal uptick in mortgage costs has been less pronounced in other parts of the UK, with the North East seeing a £2,350 increase.

In a bid to tackle inflation, the Bank of England has raised the base rate from 0.1% in December 2021 to a 16-year high of 5.25% now.

The Zoopla research looked at the average home buyer taking out a 70% loan-to-value mortgage.

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• Publications

Transforming Energy Demand

In this paper, the Transforming Energy Demand initiative outlines actions for businesses and countries to enhance energy management, efficiency and carbon intensity reduction. It highlights commercially beneficial levers, implementable with existing technologies, to impact the transition significantly.

Adopting measures for energy-efficient output and service delivery is essential for businesses and countries to sustain economic growth and achieve net-zero goals.

As the global population and energy demand rise, particularly in developing markets, implementing public policies and fostering value chain collaborations are key to managing energy consumption and reducing carbon intensity. This will help mitigate energy costs and supply issues and unlock commercial benefits, thereby accelerating the transition. At COP28, over 120 countries committed to doubling the pace of energy efficiency improvement, necessitating concrete, realistic plans.

World Economic Forum reports may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License , and in accordance with our Terms of Use .

Further reading All related content

Cómo Davos 2024 fijó la agenda para acelerar una transición energética justa y rentable

La transición a la energía verde debe ser equitativa y justa, y el capital debe dirigirse a los más necesitados. Si se hace bien, podemos ahorrar billones y triplicar la energía limpia.

The world added 50% more renewable capacity last year than in 2022

How much is global renewable energy capacity increasing and what must happen to achieve the COP28 pledge to triple clean energy capacity by 2030?

How Davos 2024 set the agenda for accelerating the energy transition in a fair and cost-effective way

The green energy transition must be equitable and fair, with capital directed to the most needed. If done right, we can save trillions and triple clean energy.

How are college costs adding up these days and how much has tuition risen? Graphics explain

College decision day is closing in and many prospective students are making commitments to their university of choosing. With that commitment comes an enrollment deposit – one of many fees students will pay in the next four years.

Of the more than 60,000 high school graduates, 64% will go on to enroll in two- or four-year college programs. Many will incur debt and join the already 43.5 million Americans who have student loans.

Last year, President Joe Biden's student debt cancellation plan was struck down by the Supreme court. Now he's proposing a workaround that could cancel the loans of more than four million borrowers, according to the White House . In addition, more than 10 million borrowers could get $5,000 in debt relief.

Whether or not the new proposal works, many college students will be paying nearly two-fold what their parents paid for an undergraduate education 20 years earlier. According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college tuition and fees at public four-year institutions has risen 179.2% over the last two decades.

How much does college tuition cost?

The average cost of an undergraduate degree ranges from  $25,707 to over $218,000 , according to the Education Data Initiative. The price varies and depends on whether a student lives on campus and the institution they're attending.

According to the most recent data from the Education Department, the average tuition at a four-year private nonprofit university increased 14% between the fall of 2010 and fall of 2021.

Chart shows rise in cost of 4-year college

In 2023, the average full time student at a four-year college spent nearly $31,000 on their tuition fees, room and board for the year. That number is more than double amount paid for the same education in the 1960s, adjusted for inflation in 2022-2023 dollars.

Why is college tuition rising?

The demand for a college education is going up – at the same time government funding for postsecondary education is on the decline, according to Bankrate.

The personal finance website pointed out several key areas that have lead to an increase in tuition costs:

• The cost of operation is increasing, due to rising inflation. The inflation rate increased 3.5% between March 2023 and 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With rising inflation comes increased cost of living. Universities must pay highly educated professors more to keep up with rising living costs.
• A reduction in state funding led to increased tuition costs, according to the National Education Association. An analysis from NEA found that state funding for higher education decreased in 37 states by an average of 6% between 2020 and 2021.
• Colleges are spending more on administrative services: A 2021 study found that between 2010 and 2018, spending on student services and administration grew by 29% and 19% respectively.

Some universities are already estimating the cost of attendance for the 2024-2025 academic year to be nearly $100,000.

AI + Machine Learning , Announcements , Azure AI , Azure AI Studio

Introducing Phi-3: Redefining what’s possible with SLMs

By Misha Bilenko Corporate Vice President, Microsoft GenAI

Posted on April 23, 2024 4 min read

• Tag: Copilot
• Tag: Generative AI

We are excited to introduce Phi-3, a family of open AI models developed by Microsoft. Phi-3 models are the most capable and cost-effective small language models (SLMs) available, outperforming models of the same size and next size up across a variety of language, reasoning, coding, and math benchmarks. This release expands the selection of high-quality models for customers, offering more practical choices as they compose and build generative AI applications.

Starting today, Phi-3-mini , a 3.8B language model is available on Microsoft Azure AI Studio , Hugging Face , and Ollama . 

• Phi-3-mini is available in two context-length variants—4K and 128K tokens. It is the first model in its class to support a context window of up to 128K tokens, with little impact on quality.
• It is instruction-tuned, meaning that it’s trained to follow different types of instructions reflecting how people normally communicate. This ensures the model is ready to use out-of-the-box.
• It is available on Azure AI to take advantage of the deploy-eval-finetune toolchain, and is available on Ollama for developers to run locally on their laptops.
• It has been optimized for ONNX Runtime with support for Windows DirectML along with cross-platform support across graphics processing unit (GPU), CPU, and even mobile hardware.
• It is also available as an NVIDIA NIM microservice with a standard API interface that can be deployed anywhere. And has been optimized for NVIDIA GPUs . 

In the coming weeks, additional models will be added to Phi-3 family to offer customers even more flexibility across the quality-cost curve. Phi-3-small (7B) and Phi-3-medium (14B) will be available in the Azure AI model catalog and other model gardens shortly.   

Microsoft continues to offer the best models across the quality-cost curve and today’s Phi-3 release expands the selection of models with state-of-the-art small models.

Azure AI Studio

Phi-3-mini is now available

Groundbreaking performance at a small size

Phi-3 models significantly outperform language models of the same and larger sizes on key benchmarks (see benchmark numbers below, higher is better). Phi-3-mini does better than models twice its size, and Phi-3-small and Phi-3-medium outperform much larger models, including GPT-3.5T.  

All reported numbers are produced with the same pipeline to ensure that the numbers are comparable. As a result, these numbers may differ from other published numbers due to slight differences in the evaluation methodology. More details on benchmarks are provided in our technical paper . 

Note: Phi-3 models do not perform as well on factual knowledge benchmarks (such as TriviaQA) as the smaller model size results in less capacity to retain facts.  

Safety-first model design

Responsible ai principles

Phi-3 models were developed in accordance with the Microsoft Responsible AI Standard , which is a company-wide set of requirements based on the following six principles: accountability, transparency, fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, and inclusiveness. Phi-3 models underwent rigorous safety measurement and evaluation, red-teaming, sensitive use review, and adherence to security guidance to help ensure that these models are responsibly developed, tested, and deployed in alignment with Microsoft’s standards and best practices.  

Building on our prior work with Phi models (“ Textbooks Are All You Need ”), Phi-3 models are also trained using high-quality data. They were further improved with extensive safety post-training, including reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), automated testing and evaluations across dozens of harm categories, and manual red-teaming. Our approach to safety training and evaluations are detailed in our technical paper , and we outline recommended uses and limitations in the model cards. See the model card collection .  

Unlocking new capabilities

Microsoft’s experience shipping copilots and enabling customers to transform their businesses with generative AI using Azure AI has highlighted the growing need for different-size models across the quality-cost curve for different tasks. Small language models, like Phi-3, are especially great for: 

• Resource constrained environments including on-device and offline inference scenarios.
• Latency bound scenarios where fast response times are critical.
• Cost constrained use cases, particularly those with simpler tasks.

For more on small language models, see our Microsoft Source Blog .

Thanks to their smaller size, Phi-3 models can be used in compute-limited inference environments. Phi-3-mini, in particular, can be used on-device, especially when further optimized with ONNX Runtime for cross-platform availability. The smaller size of Phi-3 models also makes fine-tuning or customization easier and more affordable. In addition, their lower computational needs make them a lower cost option with much better latency. The longer context window enables taking in and reasoning over large text content—documents, web pages, code, and more. Phi-3-mini demonstrates strong reasoning and logic capabilities, making it a good candidate for analytical tasks. 

Customers are already building solutions with Phi-3. One example where Phi-3 is already demonstrating value is in agriculture, where internet might not be readily accessible. Powerful small models like Phi-3 along with Microsoft copilot templates are available to farmers at the point of need and provide the additional benefit of running at reduced cost, making AI technologies even more accessible.  

ITC, a leading business conglomerate based in India, is leveraging Phi-3 as part of their continued collaboration with Microsoft on the copilot for Krishi Mitra, a farmer-facing app that reaches over a million farmers.

“ Our goal with the Krishi Mitra copilot is to improve efficiency while maintaining the accuracy of a large language model. We are excited to partner with Microsoft on using fine-tuned versions of Phi-3 to meet both our goals—efficiency and accuracy! ”    Saif Naik, Head of Technology, ITCMAARS

Originating in Microsoft Research, Phi models have been broadly used, with Phi-2 downloaded over 2 million times. The Phi series of models have achieved remarkable performance with strategic data curation and innovative scaling. Starting with Phi-1, a model used for Python coding, to Phi-1.5, enhancing reasoning and understanding, and then to Phi-2, a 2.7 billion-parameter model outperforming those up to 25 times its size in language comprehension. 1 Each iteration has leveraged high-quality training data and knowledge transfer techniques to challenge conventional scaling laws. 

Get started today

To experience Phi-3 for yourself, start with playing with the model on Azure AI Playground . You can also find the model on the Hugging Chat playground . Start building with and customizing Phi-3 for your scenarios using the  Azure AI Studio . Join us to learn more about Phi-3 during a special  live stream of the AI Show.  

1 Microsoft Research Blog, Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models, December 12, 2023 .

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What the data says about crime in the U.S.

A growing share of Americans say reducing crime should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) hold that view today, up from 47% at the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021.

We conducted this analysis to learn more about U.S. crime patterns and how those patterns have changed over time.

The analysis relies on statistics published by the FBI, which we accessed through the Crime Data Explorer , and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which we accessed through the  National Crime Victimization Survey data analysis tool .

To measure public attitudes about crime in the U.S., we relied on survey data from Pew Research Center and Gallup.

Additional details about each data source, including survey methodologies, are available by following the links in the text of this analysis.

With the issue likely to come up in this year’s presidential election, here’s what we know about crime in the United States, based on the latest available data from the federal government and other sources.

How much crime is there in the U.S.?

It’s difficult to say for certain. The  two primary sources of government crime statistics  – the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – paint an incomplete picture.

The FBI publishes  annual data  on crimes that have been reported to law enforcement, but not crimes that haven’t been reported. Historically, the FBI has also only published statistics about a handful of specific violent and property crimes, but not many other types of crime, such as drug crime. And while the FBI’s data is based on information from thousands of federal, state, county, city and other police departments, not all law enforcement agencies participate every year. In 2022, the most recent full year with available statistics, the FBI received data from 83% of participating agencies .

BJS, for its part, tracks crime by fielding a  large annual survey of Americans ages 12 and older and asking them whether they were the victim of certain types of crime in the past six months. One advantage of this approach is that it captures both reported and unreported crimes. But the BJS survey has limitations of its own. Like the FBI, it focuses mainly on a handful of violent and property crimes. And since the BJS data is based on after-the-fact interviews with crime victims, it cannot provide information about one especially high-profile type of offense: murder.

All those caveats aside, looking at the FBI and BJS statistics side-by-side  does  give researchers a good picture of U.S. violent and property crime rates and how they have changed over time. In addition, the FBI is transitioning to a new data collection system – known as the National Incident-Based Reporting System – that eventually will provide national information on a much larger set of crimes , as well as details such as the time and place they occur and the types of weapons involved, if applicable.

Which kinds of crime are most and least common?

Property crime in the U.S. is much more common than violent crime. In 2022, the FBI reported a total of 1,954.4 property crimes per 100,000 people, compared with 380.7 violent crimes per 100,000 people.  

By far the most common form of property crime in 2022 was larceny/theft, followed by motor vehicle theft and burglary. Among violent crimes, aggravated assault was the most common offense, followed by robbery, rape, and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter.

BJS tracks a slightly different set of offenses from the FBI, but it finds the same overall patterns, with theft the most common form of property crime in 2022 and assault the most common form of violent crime.

How have crime rates in the U.S. changed over time?

Both the FBI and BJS data show dramatic declines in U.S. violent and property crime rates since the early 1990s, when crime spiked across much of the nation.

Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-74%), aggravated assault (-39%) and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter (-34%). It’s not possible to calculate the change in the rape rate during this period because the FBI  revised its definition of the offense in 2013 .

The FBI data also shows a 59% reduction in the U.S. property crime rate between 1993 and 2022, with big declines in the rates of burglary (-75%), larceny/theft (-54%) and motor vehicle theft (-53%).

Using the BJS statistics, the declines in the violent and property crime rates are even steeper than those captured in the FBI data. Per BJS, the U.S. violent and property crime rates each fell 71% between 1993 and 2022.

While crime rates have fallen sharply over the long term, the decline hasn’t always been steady. There have been notable increases in certain kinds of crime in some years, including recently.

In 2020, for example, the U.S. murder rate saw its largest single-year increase on record – and by 2022, it remained considerably higher than before the coronavirus pandemic. Preliminary data for 2023, however, suggests that the murder rate fell substantially last year .

How do Americans perceive crime in their country?

Americans tend to believe crime is up, even when official data shows it is down.

In 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993 , at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite the downward trend in crime rates during most of that period.

While perceptions of rising crime at the national level are common, fewer Americans believe crime is up in their own communities. In every Gallup crime survey since the 1990s, Americans have been much less likely to say crime is up in their area than to say the same about crime nationally.

Public attitudes about crime differ widely by Americans’ party affiliation, race and ethnicity, and other factors . For example, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say reducing crime should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year (68% vs. 47%), according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

How does crime in the U.S. differ by demographic characteristics?

Some groups of Americans are more likely than others to be victims of crime. In the  2022 BJS survey , for example, younger people and those with lower incomes were far more likely to report being the victim of a violent crime than older and higher-income people.

There were no major differences in violent crime victimization rates between male and female respondents or between those who identified as White, Black or Hispanic. But the victimization rate among Asian Americans (a category that includes Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) was substantially lower than among other racial and ethnic groups.

The same BJS survey asks victims about the demographic characteristics of the offenders in the incidents they experienced.

In 2022, those who are male, younger people and those who are Black accounted for considerably larger shares of perceived offenders in violent incidents than their respective shares of the U.S. population. Men, for instance, accounted for 79% of perceived offenders in violent incidents, compared with 49% of the nation’s 12-and-older population that year. Black Americans accounted for 25% of perceived offenders in violent incidents, about twice their share of the 12-and-older population (12%).

As with all surveys, however, there are several potential sources of error, including the possibility that crime victims’ perceptions about offenders are incorrect.

How does crime in the U.S. differ geographically?

There are big geographic differences in violent and property crime rates.

For example, in 2022, there were more than 700 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in New Mexico and Alaska. That compares with fewer than 200 per 100,000 people in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine, according to the FBI.

The FBI notes that various factors might influence an area’s crime rate, including its population density and economic conditions.

What percentage of crimes are reported to police? What percentage are solved?

Most violent and property crimes in the U.S. are not reported to police, and most of the crimes that  are  reported are not solved.

In its annual survey, BJS asks crime victims whether they reported their crime to police. It found that in 2022, only 41.5% of violent crimes and 31.8% of household property crimes were reported to authorities. BJS notes that there are many reasons why crime might not be reported, including fear of reprisal or of “getting the offender in trouble,” a feeling that police “would not or could not do anything to help,” or a belief that the crime is “a personal issue or too trivial to report.”

Most of the crimes that are reported to police, meanwhile,  are not solved , at least based on an FBI measure known as the clearance rate . That’s the share of cases each year that are closed, or “cleared,” through the arrest, charging and referral of a suspect for prosecution, or due to “exceptional” circumstances such as the death of a suspect or a victim’s refusal to cooperate with a prosecution. In 2022, police nationwide cleared 36.7% of violent crimes that were reported to them and 12.1% of the property crimes that came to their attention.

Which crimes are most likely to be reported to police? Which are most likely to be solved?

Around eight-in-ten motor vehicle thefts (80.9%) were reported to police in 2022, making them by far the most commonly reported property crime tracked by BJS. Household burglaries and trespassing offenses were reported to police at much lower rates (44.9% and 41.2%, respectively), while personal theft/larceny and other types of theft were only reported around a quarter of the time.

Among violent crimes – excluding homicide, which BJS doesn’t track – robbery was the most likely to be reported to law enforcement in 2022 (64.0%). It was followed by aggravated assault (49.9%), simple assault (36.8%) and rape/sexual assault (21.4%).

The list of crimes  cleared  by police in 2022 looks different from the list of crimes reported. Law enforcement officers were generally much more likely to solve violent crimes than property crimes, according to the FBI.

The most frequently solved violent crime tends to be homicide. Police cleared around half of murders and nonnegligent manslaughters (52.3%) in 2022. The clearance rates were lower for aggravated assault (41.4%), rape (26.1%) and robbery (23.2%).

When it comes to property crime, law enforcement agencies cleared 13.0% of burglaries, 12.4% of larcenies/thefts and 9.3% of motor vehicle thefts in 2022.

Are police solving more or fewer crimes than they used to?

Nationwide clearance rates for both violent and property crime are at their lowest levels since at least 1993, the FBI data shows.

Police cleared a little over a third (36.7%) of the violent crimes that came to their attention in 2022, down from nearly half (48.1%) as recently as 2013. During the same period, there were decreases for each of the four types of violent crime the FBI tracks:

• Police cleared 52.3% of reported murders and nonnegligent homicides in 2022, down from 64.1% in 2013.
• They cleared 41.4% of aggravated assaults, down from 57.7%.
• They cleared 26.1% of rapes, down from 40.6%.
• They cleared 23.2% of robberies, down from 29.4%.

The pattern is less pronounced for property crime. Overall, law enforcement agencies cleared 12.1% of reported property crimes in 2022, down from 19.7% in 2013. The clearance rate for burglary didn’t change much, but it fell for larceny/theft (to 12.4% in 2022 from 22.4% in 2013) and motor vehicle theft (to 9.3% from 14.2%).

Note: This is an update of a post originally published on Nov. 20, 2020.

• Criminal Justice

John Gramlich is an associate director at Pew Research Center

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