European Cells and Materials does not have an article processing fee, even though information retrieved from DOAJ last year suggested that this would be the case. The ecm Submission Instructions says “as a not for profit journal that has not charged you to submit or publish”. This information needs updating as farther up on the same page there is information about a new, one-time only $100 non-refundable submission fee. The language advising authors to check carefully for scope suggest the reason for this submission fee: this is likely a popular venue to publish in.

The non-refundable submission fee may not be advisable for every journal, but when a journal becomes a sought-after venue and consistently attracts larger quantities of papers than it is able to publish, this might be an approach worth considering. As an author, if I were confronted with this type of fee, I think I’d be inclined to see it as a really good reason to do as much work as possible to ensure that my article was in good shape and submitted to an appropriate venue to save the fee. I don’t know how other potential authors would react to such a fee. This would make a good research topic.

This post is part of the open access article processing charges project.

Morrison, H. (2015). Submission fee but no article processing charge: European Cells and Materials example. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/20/submission-fee-but-no-article-processing-charge-european-cells-and-materials-example/