What is the difference between APCs and page charges? A guide to potential costs associated with publishing your manuscript

By Jessica Lipowski

As you are getting ready to publish your manuscript and are narrowing in on your journal of choice, you might face a variety of terminology in the submission guidelines about various costs associated with publication. Business models vary journal by journal and publisher by publisher. Here we breakdown the definitions of possible fees you may encounter as you decide to which journal you should submit. For those new to publishing, the terminology may be confusing, and we want to help ensure you are on the same page. Depending on where you want to submit, you may even consider building the costs into your funding application.

·       Article Processing Charge (APC): An article processing charge (APC) is a fee charged to make an article open access on publication; in some instances, like with hybrid journals*, you can even make the article Open Access after the fact, as well. The content is published under a Creative Commons (CC) license, and the APC is payable by the author, institution, or funding body. An APC will only be charged if the paper has undergone peer review and is ultimately accepted. APCs can vary journal to journal, so be sure to check the journal’s individual website to find out the current APC. The journal will be transparent with the relevant charges. Although accessing open access research is free for the reader/end user, there are costs at every stage of the publication process. This includes but is not limited to running peer-review systems, copyediting and typesetting, hosting the article in perpetuity on dedicated servers and marketing. APCs support these costs.

·       Page Charge: Page charges are not very common, but still exist. Historically page charges were introduced to cover the cost of printing an article. Page charges is a set price per published page incurred by authors, for instance $75 or $150 per page. Page charges are different from APCs in that page charges are paid by the author and mainly exist in traditional subscription journals. The author guidelines should be transparent in the price per page authors will incur, even though you may not get the final invoice until the article is copyedited and typeset. Page charges will only be charged if the paper has undergone peer review and is ultimately accepted.

·       Color Charge: Vast majority of journals allow authors to publish images and figures in color online at no cost. However, some journals may charge to publish images in the print edition in color. For instance, some SAGE Publishing journals the first color image is $800, and it is $200 for any additional color images within the same contribution. In some disciplines, like pathology, color images may be crucial to the article.

·       Permission Fees: In general, reusing or reproducing substantial portions of content requires permission, and authors are responsible for securing appropriate permissions. This includes use of text, figures, tables, multimedia content, and any other material published by another author or journal. In some instances, you may need to pay to reuse portions of third-party material.

·       Submission Fee: A submission fee is a price an author pays to submit to the journal. Paying a submission fee does not guarantee acceptance and is often introduced to cover journal and peer review costs.

We hope this helps clarify the different terms and what it may mean as you consider where to publish. We wish you all the best on your publishing journey!

For more information about getting your research published and open access options, visit the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.

*Hybrid journals are traditional subscription journals that offer authors the option to make their article Open Access. At SAGE we call this SAGE Choice.