Summary

Taylor & Francis is a responsible and progressive publisher. We are committed to supporting both authors and institutions through transparent and fair pricing for open access publishing. Our goal is to strike a balance between accessibility, quality, and sustainability in all our publishing services. We approach open access article and book charges, as well as the partnerships we make with organisations, with clarity and fairness. Our pricing strategy is designed to achieve three fundamental objectives:

  1. Fair pricing: To secure fair prices that reflect the value of our services to researchers, institutions, and the wider research community.
  2. Seamless experience: We are dedicated to providing an easy, efficient publishing journey for authors and readers, supported by robust, scalable and flexible infrastructure that meets the evolving needs of our stakeholders.
  3. Sustainability in open access: We strive to create a sustainable model for open access that ensures accessibility, innovation, and broad reach for all.

We believe these principles help us continue to serve the research community effectively, while supporting the growth of open access publishing.

Our approach to open access pricing

Pricing Transparency

Taylor & Francis offers a wide range of publishing services and is committed to being as open and transparent as possible with our stakeholders about how prices are determined.

While we aim to provide clear information, we also recognise the importance of maintaining a competitive environment within the publishing sector, as this encourages innovation, ensures fair pricing, and benefits authors by providing them with more choices, better service, and higher-quality publishing options.

Our policies are clearly defined to ensure that both authors and institutions fully understand the services we provide. In hybrid journals, we are committed to making sure that subscription revenues do not contribute to supporting open access publishing, and vice versa, ensuring that authors publishing in these titles are not subject to double-dipping.

Article Publishing Charges

Our Article Publishing Charge (APC) plays a crucial role in supporting the comprehensive process of transforming each research article into its final, polished form. This charge ensures the sustainable operation of journal editorial offices and boards, covering the full spectrum of publishing services, including submission and peer review management, editorial development, ethical validation, and rigorous plagiarism detection and integrity checking.

Additionally, it funds the enrichment of content through professional copyediting, typesetting, transforming content or data from one format to another, and structuring data in a standardised format to ensure consistency and compatibility across different platforms, databases, or systems. It also covers legal deposit obligations, abstracting, and indexing – essential steps for making the research more discoverable and accessible.

Furthermore, the APC supports the development of innovative technologies and tools that enhance the open access publishing ecosystem, such as advanced discoverability platforms, data-sharing infrastructure, and open research tools, ensuring global and unrestricted access to knowledge, while fostering collaboration and transparency in academia. It also covers the essential task of preservation of content and cybersecurity of systems, which together ensure that published content will continue to be available for future generations.

One of our core responsibilities as a publisher is to safeguard the integrity of the scholarly record, ensuring that today’s research is preserved, properly indexed, and made accessible to inform future discoveries. This commitment extends to the curation of varied metrics, which enable researchers to gauge the reach and influence of their work within the scientific community. The APC also facilitates the continuous dissemination of knowledge, helping to ensure that each article reaches its intended audience effectively.

In addition to these essential services, surplus funds generated by the APC are reinvested into the infrastructure that supports the broader ecosystem of scholarly communication. These investments support critical organisations, including standards bodies, registration services, and other entities that work to ensure the long-term preservation of published research and uphold the standards of scholarly publishing.

It is important to note that the APC does not account for the generous, voluntary efforts of peer reviewers who donate their time to the advancement of knowledge. Reviewers typically contribute as part of their career development or out of a desire to engage with innovative research. However, the management of the peer review process itself incurs significant costs, including the time and resources required to coordinate and administer the process, as well as maintaining the systems that support it. We also invest in services that recognise and reward reviewers for their contributions (i.e. Publons). In cases where reviewers receive compensation for their time, such as for accelerated publication options, this cost is reflected in the APC or related fees.

By covering these essential services, the APC ensures a robust, high-quality, and sustainable publishing model that benefits authors, institutions, and the broader research community, while maintaining the integrity and longevity of the scholarly record.

The list price APC is reviewed at least annually across journals and varies based on several factors, including:

  • Comparable Rates: We examine the APCs of journals within similar subjects, such as those focused on related fields of research, and with comparable impact metrics, including citation crossover and journal rankings.
  • Community Impact: The journal’s role and reputation within its field are key considerations. High-impact journals often provide significant value to their communities through greater visibility, robust peer review management, and broader dissemination of research, which can be reflected in the associated APCs.
  • Available Funding: We assess the typical funding levels in the journal’s field, ensuring that the APCs are affordable for authors. This includes considering grants, institutional support, and other funding sources commonly available to researchers in the discipline.
  • Journal Costs: The actual costs of running the journal, including editorial services, production, and platform maintenance, are factored into the pricing. This ensures that APCs cover operational expenses and support the journal’s quality and accessibility.
  • Retention of Importance: Our goal is to maintain the journal’s significance and impact within its discipline. Appropriate pricing ensures that we can continue to deliver value to the research community by attracting high-quality submissions, supporting excellent editorial practices, and investing in initiatives that enhance the journal’s reputation and influence.

We are committed to supporting authors through a fair and transparent publication process, especially as we continue to advance open access. We understand the financial challenges that often accompany academic publishing, and we strive to make the process as inclusive and accessible as possible.

Accepted articles contribute to sustaining the overall publishing ecosystem, supporting the rigorous processes involved in peer review, editorial management, and the provision of waivers and concessions to ensure equitable access for all researchers. Some journals introduce submission fees to help distribute these costs more evenly across submissions, and in such cases, the APC reflects this initial investment at the time of submission.

We are proud to offer a range of flexible funding options to support authors, ensuring that high-quality research can be published without financial barriers:

  • Waivers or Reductions up to 100%: Authors from low and lower-middle-income countries may be eligible for full waivers or cost reductions, ensuring that financial constraints do not hinder the dissemination of valuable research.
  • Support from Professional Associations: Authors whose research is supported by a professional association or learned society may also qualify for financial relief, depending on the level of support provided by the organisation.
  • Partnerships and Transformative Agreements: Authors whose institutions or organisations participate in membership schemes transformative agreements or funder publishing platforms often benefit from further financial assistance, which may allow them to publish without any individual payment.

In our ambitious efforts to make open access publishing more equitable, we prioritise a personalised and inclusive approach that meets the needs of a diverse global research community. Through these flexible funding options, we aim to ease the financial burden on authors while maintaining the high standards and integrity of academic publishing.

Book Publishing Charges

Our book publishing charge (BPC) covers the validation and production of a work into its final form. The charge also covers dissemination and the long-term preservation of our open access books through a range of third parties.

Our standard BPCs start from £1,250 for an individual chapter and from £10,000 for a full monograph, plus applicable taxes. Our BPC pricing is reviewed at least annually and varies based on several factors, including:

  • The text type: for example, textbooks typically have a higher BPC than a research monograph
  • The word count of the book: BPCs are typically lower for shorter books
  • Discipline: we set BPCs based on funding patterns within the field
  • Funder demographics: funders based in low or lower-middle income economies typically receive discounts on BPCs

Many customers do not pay the list price BPC, since they benefit from:

  • Discounts of up to 75% if funders are based in low or lower-middle income economies
  • Discounts due to their organization’s participation in a member scheme (their institution may in fact cover the cost of publishing OA through these arrangements)

Institutional agreements

We work with our customers to establish prices and partnerships that are fair and sustainable for all.

  • Our open access memberships allow institutions to manage the administration of open access more efficiently.
  • We have a number of agreements in place with institutions that combine subscription and open access spending. Transformative agreements (also known as read and publish / publish and read agreements) allow us to work with institutions to move their publishing output to open access, while ensuring that faculty continue to have access to subscription materials. We follow the principle of mutual sustainability in these arrangements.
  • We also offer retrospective OA on both our chapters and books, as another route to reduce open access costs.

Call to action

We are committed to increasing transparency around our pricing approach and we ask funders and institutions to recognise that our APCs will vary across our journal titles. Our role is to serve the demand and the needs of our customers – the speed of transition to OA is dictated by libraries, governments, funders, institutions and research communities. We will work with our customers to establish prices and partnerships that are fair and sustainable for all and ensure that we make information on Article and Book Publishing Charges openly available.

We commit to ensuring that every researcher – regardless of geographic location, discipline or personal circumstance has relevant and realistic options available to them to publish their work, so that no researcher is left without a voice, regardless of funding source.