Open Access

Open-Access Publishing

As an exclusively open-access publisher, Acronym Publications provides high-quality scholarly publishing services to its own and third-party client journals in line with technological advancements in the industry.

All journals co-published by Acronym Publications are hosted on the ARPHA Platform and published in a way that makes their content as FAIR as possible. This means the content is effortlessly readable, discoverable, harvestable, citable, and reusable by both humans and machines.

Acronym Publications also offers a wide range of human-provided, in-house services to ensure a smooth and expedited publishing experience for authors, editors, and reviewers. See the list of services provided through the ARPHA Platform.

In line with the principles of open science and Acronym Publications’ open-access policies, copyright is retained by the authors for all publications. Articles are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.

To ensure the long-term sustainability of its journals and cover the cost of associated in-house publishing services, Acronym Publications requires article processing charges (APCs). These charges apply only after a submitted manuscript is accepted for publication. They may be covered by the authors, the journal owner—such as a society or institution—or through a mixed model.

Business and Operating Model

APCs vary from journal to journal because of differences in their business and operating models. Full APC information is publicly available on each journal’s website.

Where a journal is co-published by Acronym Publications but owned by a learned society or another institution, the owner may sponsor all or a subset of its authors by covering their APCs completely or partially.

Alternatively, journal owners may choose to add a reasonable surplus to the APCs charged by Acronym Publications in order to support their own activities.

The services provided to journals are grouped into three operational and pricing plans, depending on the publishing workflow and final publication format. See the APC breakdown table below.

To provide a highly customisable publishing solution, Acronym Publications allows journals to exclude services normally included in their plans. When services are excluded, the APCs charged by Acronym Publications are reduced accordingly. Alternatively, a journal may upgrade its plan with services featured in a higher-priced plan, which results in increased APCs.

Publishing Models

A major factor affecting the price range for a journal is its publishing model:

1. PDF-only publishing: Article publication in PDF format with machine-readable rich metadata.
2. PDF, HTML, and XML publishing via the ARPHA Writing Tool: Publication in PDF, semantically enriched HTML, and full-text JATS XML, based on manuscript submission through the ARPHA Writing Tool.
3. PDF, HTML, and XML publishing via file upload: Publication in PDF, semantically enriched HTML, and full-text JATS XML, based on manuscript submission through file upload.

The APCs for group 1 are the lowest because they require minimal manual labour. Costs are higher for group 2 because the automated submission, editorial, and publication workflow depends on technologically advanced infrastructure that is continuously developed and maintained by Acronym Publications’ in-house IT staff. Costs are highest for group 3 because of additional human-provided services, such as typesetting in InDesign, as part of the publication process.

APC Breakdown at the Publisher Level

In compliance with Plan S requirements, Acronym Publications provides a breakdown of APCs according to each journal’s publishing workflow and final publication format. The figures below are calculated on the basis of average APCs and follow the guidelines of the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA).

Service	PDF-only publishing (file-based submission)	PDF/HTML/XML publishing (submission via authoring tool)	PDF/HTML/XML publishing (file-based submission)
1. Journal Operations	30%	35%	20%
2. Publication	34%	26%	43%
3. Fees	1%	1%	1%
4. Marketing and Communication	10%	12%	10%
5. General	7%	12%	10%
6. Discounts and Waivers	16%	6%	6%
7. Surplus	2%	8%	10%
Total publication fee per article (EUR)	€250	€600	€750

What the APC Covers

1. Journal Operations

Platform Development and Maintenance

Acronym Publications develops, maintains, and updates its own infrastructure, the ARPHA Platform, to accommodate the complete publishing process and related services for each journal. These services include:

• Website design, setup, and hosting
• Submission, peer-review, and production-management platform
• Publishing and hosting platform
• Indexing, archiving, and distribution
• Copy-editing, typesetting, and proofreading
• Production and publication of articles in three formats: PDF, HTML, and XML
• Integration with ARPHA Preprints

Additional Platforms and Innovative Tools

To expand its services to the academic community, Acronym Publications has also developed several other platforms and innovative tools:

• ARPHA Preprints: An integrated preprint platform that gives authors of ARPHA-hosted journals the option to post a preprint during manuscript submission without uploading additional files.
• ARPHA Proceedings: A specialised platform where conference organisers can publish extended proceedings that may include data, figures, citations, video presentations, presentations, and other materials in an event-branded collection.
• ARPHA Conference Abstracts: A specialised platform where conference organisers can publish extended abstracts that may include data, images, videos, and multimedia in a structured, event-branded collection.
• ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT): An entirely online authoring environment integrated into the ARPHA editorial and production-management platform. It provides a shared collaborative space for co-authors, external contributors, pre-submission reviewers, language editors, and copy editors to work together on a manuscript before submission to an ARPHA-hosted journal.
• ReFindit: A literature and data discovery tool that allows users to retrieve information from Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, Mendeley, RefBank, and the Global Names Usage Bank (GNUB). Users can search by Digital Object Identifier (DOI), author, title, or free text.
• Acronym Taxon Profile (PTP): A search engine that automatically harvests information relevant to biological taxon names mentioned in a publication. It uses data from Crossref, PubMed Central, PubMed, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, NCBI/GenBank, ZooBank, the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), Index Fungorum, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Wikipedia, the Encyclopaedia of Life, Plazi.org, and other sources.
• Acronym Annotator: A web application that annotates free text with ontology terms from an ontology or vocabulary list. The Annotator is a resource of the Acronym API and helps streamline the semantic enrichment of publications.
• OpenBiodiv: An Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System comprising a knowledge graph, a Linked Open Dataset, the OpenBiodiv-O ontology, and a website. OpenBiodiv gathers biodiversity knowledge extracted from semantically enhanced biodiversity articles published by Acronym Publications and taxonomic treatments harvested by Plazi. It exposes links between and within articles and their content.

IT Staff

Acronym Publications relies on its in-house IT team to develop and maintain its publishing and hosting technologies and platforms, including individual journal websites and their underlying publication workflows.

Helpdesk Staff

Acronym Publications has an in-house helpdesk that supports all journal users—authors, reviewers, and editors—with questions about the functionality and policies of the journal system. According to Acronym Publications’ policy, a reply is normally provided within 24 business hours.

2. Publication

Triaging

Acronym Publications’ journal management team performs an initial filtering of submissions before forwarding them to the journal’s handling editors. This includes basic screening for plagiarism, malpractice, and compliance with the journal’s focus, scope, policies, and technical requirements.

Peer-Review Management

Acronym Publications’ managing editors oversee the organisation of the peer-review process.

Other Editorial Assistance

Depending on the journal’s operating model, the Acronym Publications team may also assist with journal production, maintenance, and further development. In-house staff may help identify gaps in the editorial board and suggest new subject editors where necessary.

The in-house staff may also be responsible for the initial screening of editor application forms before forwarding them to the Editors-in-Chief. Depending on the service package selected by a journal, the Acronym Publications team provides reporting, consultancy, and organisational assistance to collect feedback, encourage stronger collaboration within the editorial team, and improve the journal’s academic image and appeal.

DOI Management

All publications—including preprints posted on ARPHA Preprints—are assigned their own DOI and registered with Crossref.

Indexing

Acronym Publications indexes each publication in appropriate partnering databases through web services. The publishing platform exports rich XML article metadata to these indexing services. Depending on the journal’s operating plan, full-text JATS XML files can be published together with the article.

Acronym Publications’ dedicated staff are also available to advise journals on their indexing strategy.

Archiving

Acronym Publications provides long-term preservation for all publications through CLOCKSS, Zenodo, and Portico. Journals can use additional archiving services through higher-level Indexing and Archiving services.

Typesetting, Copy-Editing, and Proofreading

Unless a client journal prefers to manage some or all of these services itself, they are provided by Acronym Publications’ dedicated in-house team.

Language Editing

Acronym Publications provides both lightweight copy-editing by native speakers and thorough English-language stylistic editing, depending on the journal’s operating plan.

Rejection

Journals co-published by Acronym Publications do not charge authors unless and until their manuscript is accepted for publication. However, rejected manuscripts still incur costs related to the automated and manual services provided by Acronym Publications and its in-house staff.

3. Fees

Acronym Publications is a paying member of several publishing organisations, including OASPA, DOAJ, Crossref, and others. In some cases, Acronym Publications pays part of the surplus to the learned societies that own the journals.

4. Communication

PR and Marketing

Acronym Publications’ in-house PR and marketing team is responsible for promoting journals and their content through various communication channels, including subscription-based news platforms and sponsorship of relevant academic events.

Depending on the Communication, Promotion and Marketing service package used by a journal, Acronym Publications’ in-house staff may also assist with or provide social media management and additional promotional activities.

Visibility and Outreach

Acronym Publications’ journals provide public and detailed usage statistics at article and sub-article level. These statistics are sourced from self-developed metrics tools and external services such as Altmetric and Dimensions.

5. General

Management and Administration

Acronym Publications employs non-editorial staff and maintains physical offices to support its operations.

Other Business Costs

Acronym Publications’ journals use multiple paid services, including Altmetric, Publons, Dimensions, EurekAlert, AlphaGalileo, ScienceOpen, Portico, CLOCKSS, and others.

Other business costs include print-on-demand services, packaging and shipment of printed copies, logistics, server hosting and administration, office maintenance, and related expenses.

Taxes

Acronym Publications pays taxes in accordance with applicable national legislation.

6. Surplus

Acronym Publications allocates surplus to the further development of its platform, based on continuous feedback from clients and users, as well as to research and the integration of additional relevant services.

Available surplus from Acronym-owned journals is also directed to newly launched journals, especially those in emerging scientific fields or those whose communities are typically impeded by a lack of research funding.

Where a journal is owned by an institution or society that has opted to top up production costs by reasonably increasing APCs, the difference is paid to the journal owner at the agreed frequency.

7. Discounts and Waivers

To support equity in academia, Acronym Publications provides discounts and waivers on APCs across its journal portfolio to:

• Scientists living or working in low- and middle-income countries
• Graduate and PhD students
• Retired scientists
• Researchers working privately
• Editors and reviewers

Each journal provides complete information about its discounts and waivers policy on its website.