Background


The Article Processing Charge (APC) is currently the primary method of funding Open Access (OA) peer-reviewed journals and is part of the wide global Open Access OA’s ethics debate.

APC fees applied to academic research are usually expensive, from under $100 to over $5000, and even sometimes as high as €9500 for the journal Nature.

A 2019 analysis has shown 75% of European spending on scientific journals goes to "big five" publishers: Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and the American Chemical Society (ACS). Together they accounted for 56% of articles published.

RELX, the parent company of Elsevier, had revenues of $9.8 billion in 2019. Elsevier’s profits account for about 34% of RELX’s total profits. By contrast, Informa, Taylor & Francis’ parent company, had revenues of $3.6 billion in 2019.



About us


SPS is a group of enthusiasts consisting of scientists, researchers, editors, designers, whose goal is to unite scientists of various scientific fields for sharing the Article Processing Charge (APC).

We also help authors and journal editors in manuscripts preparing: manuscript formatting, Graphical Abstract design, journal cover design, Call for Papers poster design, Social and Email Marketing for academics’ involvement.