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How are JMIR authors funding the publication costs?

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Editorial Director
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In alignment with the majority of quality open access journals, most JMIR journals have fees (see: Are there costs involved in publishing in JMIR journals, what are your fees?). However, some JMIR journals are free (see: Which JMIR journals are currently free to publish in?), and JMIR offers waivers/discounts in exceptional cases. 

We actually have detailed data on how authors cover the costs of open access publishing from over 1,000 respondents who submitted a paper to a JMIR journal and filled in the post-submission author survey. The following shows the results as of April 2017:

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Most authors (44.8%) pay these costs from their grant money, from the same line item in a grant from which they would, for example, pay conference travel and fees. Some other authors have some grants or institutional funding for educational activities or conferences (20.9%). Some universities, institutions or departments have institutional membership arrangements with JMIR Publications, in which case the APF can be waived (14.5%). Examples include authors from the University of California, whose APF is partially or fully covered by their institutional membership (see APF Support for Corresponding Authors from the University of California).

Other institutions may have institutional open access funds, for example the signatories of the Compact for Open Access Equity (13.3%). Some others have slush or reserve funds (8.7%) or take the money from somewhere else (9.4%).

Note that authors can split the APF for a payment (see Can multiple authors split a payment?) so there may be a mix of the above for any certain article.

 

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