Which pockets pay APCs?

Peter Suber

When scholars publish in open-access journals that levy article processing charges (APCs), how often do they pay the APCs with personal funds, as opposed to funds from their employers, funders, or other sources? Several studies have turned up data on the question. This is my attempt to summarize their results.

I plan to keep it up to date. If I overlook a relevant study, please let me know.

Short overview: In the global north, APCs are usually paid by the author's employer or funder, not by the author out of pocket. In the south, most APCs, or a plurality of them (depending on the study), are paid by authors out of pocket.

In chronological order:

(1) Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown, Authors and open access publishing, Learned Publishing, July 1, 2004. Permalink. These results are based on a survey of 154 authors (apparently all from the UK) who had published in OA journals. Of those who paid APCs:

25% paid the APC from a research grant.
17% paid the APC from university funds (combining all sources of university funds).
4% paid the APC from personal funds.

(2) Suenje Dallmeier-Tiessen and 16 co-authors, Highlights from the SOAP [Study of Open Access Publishing] project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing, arXiv, January 27, 2011. Permalink. These results are based on a survey of 38,358 publishing researchers from all fields. “Responses came from 162 countries, with a large representation from research-intensive nations.”

59% of authors paid the APC from a grant (whether or not the grant included dedicated OA funds)
24% paid the APC from university funds.,
12% paid the APC from personal funds.

Also see Table 4 at p. 9. The percentages vary by field and type of employer. See Figure 8 at p. 10.

(3) David J. Solomon and Bo‐Christer Björk, Publication fees in open access publishing: Sources of funding and factors influencing choice of journal, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, October 24, 2011. Permalink. These results are based on a survey of 429 researchers in 65 countries and seven disciplines. “A total of 266 or approximately 62% of the authors were from countries where the annual per capita Gross National Product (GNP) was greater than $25,000 per year in 2008.”

The authors distinguished respondents from more affluent countries (per capita GNP over $25k USD) and less affluent countries (per capita GNP less than $25k USD). Among authors from more affluent countries: 31% paid their APC from a grant, 36% from university sources (combining all university sources), and 11% from personal funds. Among authors from less affluent countries, the respective numbers are 16%, 26%, and 39%. See Table 5. The percentages varied by discipline and by the size of the APC; see Tables 4 and 6.

(4) Kathryn Spiller, Case Study: Introducing OA within your portfolio, Research Information, January 15, 2013. Permalink. These results are based on a survey of 904 researchers, mostly from North America and Europe.

“We also found that 72 per cent had experience of paying page charges [APCs]….Over 50 per cent of these authors fund charges through grant money and just over 30 per cent fund them personally.”

(5) SAGE makes Open Access more accessible to social science and humanities scholars, SAGE press release, January 24, 2013.

“A recent survey revealed more than 70% of accepted authors had personally paid the article processing charge (APC) to enable their research to be published in SAGE Open.”

(6) Publishers Communication Group, Open Access Library Survey: An investigation of the role of libraries in open access funding and support within institutions, September 2014. Permalink. These results are based on a survey of 149 librarians from 30 countries. “The majority of survey respondents, 56%, reside in North America. The United Kingdom accounted for about 12% of respondents and the remaining survey-takers were spread mainly around Latin America and Western Europe.”

Librarians reported that 69% of authors from their institutions paid their APCs from university funds (combining all university sources), 47% from personal funds, and 38% from a grant. See Figure 6 at p. 8

(7) Andy Nobes and Siân Harris, Open Access in low- and middle-income countries: attitudes and experiences of researchers, Emerald Open Research, first version, November 12, 2019. Permalink. These results are based on a survey of 507 researchers from the developing world connected to INASP’s AuthorAID project.

60% of authors reported that they paid their APCs from personal funds, 18% from university funds, 8% from external funds, and 14% received a waiver. See Table 9.

(8) Melissa H. Cantrell and Juleah A. Swanson, Funding Sources for Open Access Article Processing Charges in the Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities in the United States, Publications, February 28, 2020. Permalink. These results are based on “a survey to faculty who had an open access journal article published in 2017 from three doctoral granting, high research activity universities in the United States. Twenty-two scholars participated in the final survey, ten of whom indicated that they paid an APC for their publication.”

6 (60%) paid the APC from university funds (combining all sources of university funding).
3 (30%) paid the APC from funder sources.
0 paid the APC out of pocket but 1 (10%) had a co-author who paid it out of pocket.

(9) Jessica Monaghan, Mithu Lucraft, Katie Allin, Maurits van der Graaf, and Tracey Clarke, 'APCs in the Wild': Could Increased Monitoring and Consolidation of Funding Accelerate the Transition to Open Access? Springer Nature White Paper, April 6, 2020. Also see the press release. These results are based on a survey of 1,014 Springer Nature authors.

61% of authors reported that they paid APCs from their grants or other funder sources (whether or not the grant included dedicated OA funds), 57% from their universities (combining all university sources), and 16% from personal funds. See Figure 5 at p. 13. The survey let authors check more than one source.
The percentages vary by region; see Figures 10 and 13.

(10) Gali Halevi and Samantha Walsh, Faculty Attitudes Towards Article Processing Charges for Open Access Articles, Publishing Research Quarterly, July 6, 2021. Permalink. These results are based on a survey of faculty members at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; 10.6% of the faculty completed the survey (310 faculty members).

“Our findings show that about 50% of respondents include anticipated APC costs in grant applications, and that 16% of faculty will pay APCs using personal funds.”
The percentages varied by faculty rank. See Figure 2.

(11) The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Exploring the Hidden Impacts of Open Access Financing Mechanisms: AAAS Survey on Scholarly Publication Experiences & Perspectives, October 2022. Permalink. See the second chart on p. 6. Also see the summary. These results are based on a survey of 422 researchers, all in the US. The numbers below are from the 170 respondents who had paid APCs and responded to this question. The percentages exceed 100%, presumably because some authors paid different APCs from different sources.

69.4% paid APCs from grant funds, 55% from university funds (combining all university sources), and 15% used personal funds.

(12) Primary Research Group, Survey of US Higher Education Faculty 2023, Payment of Open Access Publication Fees, January 2023. Permalink. Because of its high price, I don’t have access to the full report. I can only present information from report’s ad and accompanying free excerpt. Note that the survey was limited to US faculty.

15.59% of respondents paid APCs from university funds (combining all university sources).
Apparently the survey did not ask whether faculty paid APCs from grant funds or personal funds.

(13) IGI Global, IGI Global OA Annual Academic Publishing Trends and Open Access Survey, November 2023. Permalink. In a survey of “200,000 worldwide researchers of all ages, experiences, fields, [and] ethnicities”, IGI found that of those that had paid APCs:

48.4% paid with personal funds.
18.27% paid with university funds.
16.99% paid with money from funding agencies (combining all funder sources, public and private).

This survey also turned up funding sources not mentioned in most other studies. For example:

5.13% paid with funds from a scholarly society.
4.49% paid with funds from a nonprofit organization other than their university, funder, or society.
2.56% paid with funds from “business enterprises”.
1.6% paid with funds from a “private donor”.

(14) Juan-José Boté-Vericad et al., Open Access Survey Report, ASIS&T, May 2024. Permalink. The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) surveyed its 2,300 members in April-May 2024, and received 122 responses (5.3% of the membership). The survey covered the years 2019-2023, and went to all association members, including those who did not publish during that period or who did not publish in OA journals. The survey found that:

16% paid APCs with personal funds
31% had the APC waived by the journal or paid by their employer or funder (the survey did not break these down)
31% published in no-APC (aka “diamond”) OA journals
22% did not publish in OA journals during the period covered by the survey.

(15) It looks like an October 2024 survey report from Primary Research Group has relevant data. For example, “Academic departments covered 8.73% of total open access publication fees paid by the respondents over the past two years.” But the report is paywalled and I don’t have access to it. I’d be grateful if anyone with access could send me the relevant findings.

(16) Osvaldo Gallardo et al., When researchers pay to publish: Results from a survey on APCs in four countries, arXiv (preprint), October 16, 2024 (permalink). The authors collected information from researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa.

The use of personal fund to pay APCs ranged from 1.9% in South Africa to 5.5% in Argentina, 15.8% in Mexico, and 34.5% in Brazil. (Table 11.)
The use of university APC funds ranged from 2.1% in Argentina to 11.8% in Mexica, 13.1% in Brazil, and 24.6% in South Africa. (Table 11.)
The use of funds from one’s “research project” (which might be grant-funded) ranged from 23.5% in Mexico to 24.7 in Argentina, 29.4% in Brazil, and 48.1% in South Africa. (Table 11.)
Reliance on international co-authors to pay APCs ranged from 3.2% in Brazil to 5.6% in South Africa, 7.7% in Mexico, and 17.4% in Argentina. (Table 11.)

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Although these studies report somewhat different results, they all imply that it’s highly misleading to refer to APCs as “author fees” or APC-based journals as “author pays” journals, as if APCs were always or usually paid by authors out of pocket.

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First released May 13, 2020.

This post supersedes an older one from February 1, 2013.