Radar Perene / Archive / science

The costs and timelines of publishing a scientific article: what rarely gets explained

◦ Index methodology v2.2 (working papers with DOI). See the methodology.

Science

The public image of scientific publishing alternates between two false portraits. In the first, publishing is free and fast — you write, you send, it comes out. In the second, it is a vanity market where any text gets printed for a fee. Reality is less comfortable than either: publishing has an economy of its own, with costs of different natures and a calendar measured in seasons — and almost no one explains it before the author finds out alone.

Publishing a scientific article involves direct costs that range from zero to significant sums depending on the journal (submission or publication fees), indirect costs that almost never make it into the estimate (translation, copyediting, membership in scientific societies) and evaluation timelines that, across rounds, are measured in months and frequently cross a full year. None of those numbers describes the quality of the article — they describe the infrastructure that evaluates it.

The cost categories, one by one

The best-known direct cost is the open-access publication fee — the APC — which some journals charge to make the article free to the reader. It is the model that shifts the cost from subscriber to author. In the Brazilian system, a good share of journals charge nothing: they are maintained by universities and scientific societies, with editorial work done on a nearly volunteer basis. Between the extremes there are variations — submission fees, charged just to evaluate; per-page fees; member discounts.

The indirect costs are the ones that surprise. Professional translation or revision of the English, when the journal requires it; the annual dues of the scientific society that organizes the conference where the text circulates beforehand; and time — the largest cost of all, and the only one no fee table discloses. Whoever budgets the publication of a study by the journal's fee alone repeats the error of budgeting a car by the price of a full tank.

The real calendar

The timelines run on two clocks. The first is fast: the editorial screening, which decides in weeks whether the manuscript goes to reviewers or comes back — the desk reject mechanism, the subject of the next article on this trail. The second is slow: each round of referee reports takes months, the typical outcome of a successful evaluation is a list of demands to answer, and rounds pile up. In numbers: across the system, rejection rates above 80% are common at well-regarded economics journals, and the interval between submission and final decision frequently crosses an entire year — figures of the system, not of any particular case.

The detail rarely said out loud: the slow clock is not laziness. Referees are active researchers who evaluate for free, between their own obligations. The entire system runs on unpaid work — which explains both the slowness and its resistance to any simple fix.

The warning sign embedded in the prices

The economy described above has a well-known parasite: predatory journals, which invert the system's logic — charging to publish fast, with façade review or none. The pattern is recognizable by its combination: a flattering email invitation, a promised decision within days, the fee disclosed only after acceptance. In a system where serious evaluation is slow because it is free and voluntary, the promise of paid speed is itself the diagnosis. The descriptive ruler this article offers is this: price and timeline, read together, say a great deal about what a journal actually sells.

The step where the costs are zero — and the house knows it by practice

There is one stage of the circuit where this whole economy charges no admission: the public study before review. Scientific repositories such as Zenodo assign DOIs free of charge, and it is on that step that this house's public output lives — six working papers online, with permanent identifiers, at zero direct cost, starting with the Perene Risk Index study (10.5281/zenodo.21325743). It is the experience the house can report in full, because it is public and verifiable; what happens to any study from there onward, in the journal circuit, is not public business — anyone's — while it is under way. The costs and timelines described above belong to the system, documented on the journals' own instruction pages, and that is where any author confirms them.

Frequently asked questions

Does paying a fee guarantee publication?

At serious journals, no — the fee funds the infrastructure, not the outcome; rejection remains the most common result. When payment does guarantee acceptance, that has another name, and the paragraph on predatory journals above describes it.

Is a journal that charges predatory?

No. Charging an APC is a legitimate and common model in international open access. The predatory trait is not the price — it is the façade review, the promise of speed and the opacity about who evaluates.

Why does evaluation take so many months?

Because it depends on specialists who work unpaid, against a stream of manuscripts that only grows. The slowness is the structural price of evaluation done by peers, not by employees.

Is publishing for free possible?

In Brazil, yes, frequently — a good share of national journals charge authors nothing. And the step before the journal, the working paper with a DOI in an open repository, costs zero in any country.

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Continue the trail: What a desk reject is and what it does not say about an article's quality →

House reading: what the house publishes every day, with no fee and no referee, is in the Diário.

Interpreting a concrete case — why an article took the path it took — is backstage conversation, the kind that does not belong on a public page.