We occasionally come across a situation when an author withdraws a manuscript upon receiving a payment request. We consider this irresponsible, when much of the publication process has been completed by editors and reviewers. We request authors to provide payment details after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. The fees policy is published on our website and we require that the author confirms that they have has read the journal policies prior submitting the manuscript. The issue mostly concerns authors from particular geographic areas, and it puts the publisher in an awkward position.
Question for COPE Council
- Do you have any recommendation to deal with such matters?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
The solution is likely to be twofold: (1) make sure the payment policy is clear and the author agrees upon submission of the manuscript; and (2) see if there is some way to provide financial assistance if there is truly a need.
Journals need to be unambiguously transparent about article fees. Some authors may be unfamiliar with open access, particularly in specialties where it does not have a strong market share yet. The journal could be more up front about its charges and its business model—for example, on the home page, on the about page, at the top and in bold of the author instructions page. Hence the journal should look at its information for authors and website presentation about fees. The COPE Principle of Transparency v4 states: 'Author fees: If author fees are charged (such as article processing charges, page charges, editorial processing charges, language editing fees, colour charges, submission fees, membership fees, or other supplementary charges), then the fees should be clearly stated on the website… Author fee information should be easy to find and presented as early in the submission process as possible.'
The mention of open access APC fee payment after acceptance could be stated upfront in the aims and scope on the homepage, such as in BMJ Open: 'BMJ Open is an online, open access journal, dedicated to publishing medical research from all disciplines and therapeutic areas. .... Authors are asked to pay article-publishing charges on acceptance; the ability to pay does not influence editorial decisions.' Links to a statement on APC fee payment after acceptance can also be repeated in different places, for example, included as reminders in the submission platform, business model page, author information page, and ethics page.
Many journals/publishers offer deep discounts to authors in developing countries; for example see the fee structure at research4life here. If the late withdrawal requests are coming from authors in these countries, perhaps the journal could consider implementing such a fee structure. Another example is the BMJ which shows a policy for waivers/discounts, which can also be considered if the authors currently doing the withdrawal after acceptance say they can't afford the APC or are from HINARI countries.
If the reason authors give is that they changed their mind, authors have the right to withdraw their papers for whatever reason. If the reason given is to do with multiple submission or trying to submit to a journal with an impact factor, or higher impact factor, after improving their paper from peer review, then that would be unethical. This could be a reason if the same author/s are repeatedly submitting papers and withdrawing at payment stage, with a supposed reason of not knowing or not being able to pay. In that case, the institution could be informed.