Price Transparency on F1000Research
19 August, 2020 | Rebecca Lawrence and Michael Markie |
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In our latest blog, Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director, F1000 Research Ltd and Michael Markie, Publishing Director, F1000 Research Ltd, discuss the upcoming adjustments to the pricing structures on our publishing platform F1000Research and that of our partner platforms, in order to provide an equitable and more balanced approach to our APCs across all subject areas and to enable us to continue to better support all researchers, irrespective of their financial position.
Over the past couple of years, F1000Research has started to move its scope beyond the life sciences to publishing research across all academic subjects. However, articles in physical sciences, arts, humanities and social sciences are typically far longer in length than the typical maximum word count in the life sciences and medicine. This has meant that our current pricing structure based on article length has become increasingly problematic as, especially in the humanities and social sciences, it places the largest costs on subject areas that are typically least well-funded.
We have therefore been reviewing our pricing structure since summer 2019, to develop a fairer approach to pricing that works across all academic subjects and better represents the editorial service that is required for each article type. We have subsequently combined this work with the article processing charge (APC) transparency requirements necessary for Plan S compliance. As a member of the Plan S price transparency pilot, we worked closely with Information Power and nine other publishers to discuss and test a pricing and service framework that can function at the publisher level, as well as helping researchers, libraries and funders better understand and compare the services and associated costs they are procuring.
As a result, we are today announcing our new pricing and service framework, which ensures a fairer and more representative pricing across all academic subject areas whilst providing full transparency on what those prices comprise of.
Pricing structure: past and future
Our prices have remained unchanged since we first formally launched F1000Research back in 2013. Prices were previously based on article length bands, founded on the principle that, in general, shorter articles typically have less data associated with them and should therefore be simpler to conduct the pre-publication checks and be quicker and easier to get peer reviewed compared with longer, full-length research articles.
In addition, the lowest band for up to 1,000 words at $150 aimed to encourage rapid sharing of single figure discoveries, whilst the top word count band for articles over 8,000 words at $2000 aimed to discourage submissions that were overly long, where in the life sciences (which was our only scope when we launched) such a length makes it typically very difficult to get the article peer reviewed.
During the past seven years of running this pricing model, we have learned several things. Firstly, researchers rarely publish single figure findings. Secondly when they do, they are often equally associated with significant research data, meaning that they take no less effort to conduct the pre-publication checks, and are no easier to get peer reviewed.
Furthermore, as our publishing scope has now expanded beyond the life sciences to all academic subject areas, articles in physical sciences, and especially in the arts, humanities and social sciences are typically much longer in length than 8,000 words and hence a pricing structure based on article length no longer makes sense for authors, institutions or funders. We have therefore devised a fairer and more representative pricing structure to ensure that certain academic subject areas do not receive an unfair disadvantage.
Introducing Article Type Pricing
The way we structure our pricing is changing from word count bands to article types. To aid the development of this new pricing structure, we analysed the editorial service we provide for each of the article types that we support. From that analysis, we have created three price categories for our new article type pricing structure. These categories are based on:
- article types that are quicker and simpler to check prior to publication
- article types that are easier to support the authors in the sharing of the underlying data
- article types that are easier to obtain peer reviews for
Figure 1. New F1000Research pricing structure and price transparency.

These prices will come into effect for submission for F1000Research from 1st September 2020.
We will of course continue to fully support the HINARI/AGORA Access to Research in Health Programme, where we give a full waiver to authors from the HINARI Group A countries, and a 50% discount to authors from Group B countries. We have found that as the awareness and popularity of F1000Research has significantly increased around the world, the proportion of submissions from countries in the HINARI/AGORA list and from others who do not have access to adequate funds has also increased. Our new pricing structure ensures that we can adequately cover the cost of those waivers and discounts, so that we can continue to support publication for those who may not have access to the funds to pay the full APC.
Price Transparency
Openness and transparency around our pricing align perfectly with our mission towards open research publishing. We feel that it is incredibly important to show authors, institutions and funders exactly what service we provide for the prices we charge. When the new pricing comes into effect, we will therefore also be publishing the full price transparency breakdown for each of our new article type categories, together with full explanation of the expenditure breakdown in terms of the services we provide.
For each of the price categories, we have used the Information Power’s Plan S Price Transparency framework breakdown scheme and provide a summary of the key contributory elements above in Figure 1.
As mentioned, this new pricing will come into effect for all submissions to F1000Research from 1 September 2020. We will also be similarly updating pricing across many of our platforms over the coming couple of months and will be posting explanatory blogs and associated APC breakdown charts for these. We believe that these adjustments to the pricing structure provide an equitable and more balanced approach to our APCs across all subject areas and to enable us to continue to better support all researchers, irrespective of their financial position.
A full explanation of the price transparency breakdown for the article type categories is available here.
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