The journal is open access and free to read. Publication is funded on the author side by an Article Processing Charge (APC), payable only on acceptance. There is no submission fee, and fee waivers are need-blind. Good, reproducible science must never fail because someone cannot pay.
The APC is CHF 1,000 (≈ US$1,230), payable only when a paper is accepted. Prices are set and charged in Swiss francs (the publisher is Swiss), and the dollar figure is indicative, following the exchange rate. Submitting, review and the decision are free.
What the APC pays for
The APC pays for the work behind a published article. That is the reproducibility-verifying review with detailed, constructive feedback, production in HTML and archival formats, DOI registration, hosting, and long-term preservation of the article together with its reproducibility package. The editorial decision is made and signed before payment is ever discussed.
We pay for the best works
The top 10% of published articles do not pay the APC at all. Instead, the journal pays their authors an award of CHF 300 (≈ US$370), and the published article carries a visible award mark, a quality stamp on the paper itself. Selection is editorial and based on the quality of the work alone; payment and waiver status play no part in it. The selection criteria will be published before the first award is made.
Who publishes the journal
FAIR Press Journals is an independent publisher, run by its founding editors as a Swiss company, FAIR Press Journals GmbH in Olten. It is not a charity and not part of a larger group.
Decision integrity
- The editorial decision is made without regard to payment or ability to pay. The deciding editor does not see payment or waiver status and is not rewarded per acceptance.
- Editors do not publish their own research in the journal they edit. An editor of another FAIR Press Journals title who submits to this journal is treated as any other author and takes no part in any decision about their own submission (see the ethics policy).
- We publish our process openly. Decision counts appear on the journal page with their as-of date, and acceptance rates and decision times will be published as real numbers once enough decisions exist.
Need-blind waivers
- Automatic full waiver for corresponding authors based in low-income and lower-middle-income economies. Because our base fee is structurally low, it stays affordable across the board, including for researchers in middle-income countries who can otherwise fall between a full waiver and the full fee.
- Hardship waivers (full or partial) for any unfunded author or student, on request, need-blind and non-bureaucratic. A short note is enough.
- Waivers are requested at submission and decided independently of the scientific decision. Waiver status is never visible to the deciding editor. Granted waivers are reported in aggregate.
Optional feedback report on rejected submissions
Every rejection letter develops one decisive issue in depth, for free. Authors of rejected submissions can additionally purchase the full assessment report as optional feedback (see the peer-review policy). Three hard rules govern it. The report is strictly optional, it never changes the decision, and it is not offered where the rejection is for integrity reasons. Appeals are always free. The full report costs CHF 100 (≈ US$123), the same price whether the rejection came at the desk or after full review.
Refunds and billing
Institutional invoicing is supported, and invoices are issued at acceptance with a 30-day payment term. Publication never waits for payment. An accepted article proceeds to production and publishes on its normal schedule while the invoice is settled. If an article is withdrawn or retracted due to a journal error, the APC is refunded. The optional privacy-preserving data service (see data & code availability) is priced separately and billed only when an author opts in. Its pricing will likewise be published before the service accepts engagements.