Open Access and Article Processing Charge (APC)

The trend among publishing entities is increasingly towards adopting open-access policies. The rationale behind this move is to enhance global reach and engagement, offering significant benefits to both academic and professional circles, as well as to the wider public. This approach ensures that all our contributors and readers enjoy the advantages of unrestricted access. To sustain free access for readers while managing expenses related to peer review, editing, typesetting, maintaining online presence, archiving, and overall journal operation, we impose an article processing fee (APC) on manuscripts that successfully pass the peer review stage.

Article Processing Charges

This journal's APC is £680 (excl. VAT) for non-funding and £800 (excl. VAT) for funding (funding from internal and external bodies). Submissions exceeding 8500 words, calculated with single-spacing and including references, will incur a cost of £90 per A4 page. The stated APC may be subject to adjustments at the discretion of the publisher. The submitting author bears the APC and must acknowledge this commitment at the time of submission, with the understanding that this obligation cannot be transferred to a third party without the publisher's consent.

Our APC structure is aligned with recommendations from the Fair Open Access Alliance,, ensuring our practices are sustainable, transparent, and in full compliance with Plan S requirements, a significant movement to encourage open access by funding bodies.

Article Submission Charges

There are no charges for submitting articles to this journal.

Revisions Post-Layout

Authors are given the opportunity to review and approve their manuscript post-final editing and before the layout phase. Subsequent to this approval, any corrections are limited to typesetting errors, and any new textual modifications necessitating layout changes will result in Galley Change Fees (GCF) at a rate of $30.00 per hour (excluding VAT).

Accepted Currencies

Our accepted currencies include British pounds (£), and US dollars (USD). An email containing a payment link will be sent to the author upon article acceptance, offering the option to select the invoice currency.

We support various payment methods:

  • Telephonic Transfer (TT)
  • Online Bank Transfer
  • Debit and Credit Cards
  • PayPal

APCs must be settled within 5 to 10 business days post-acceptance, and publication will proceed once full payment is confirmed. Authors opting for TT will cover any associated bank fees. A payment receipt will be emailed to the author upon receipt of payment.

Invoices will be sent via email soon after article acceptance, and only official invoices from ICR Publications (@icrp.org.uk) are recognized. Third-party collections of APCs are not authorized.

APC Discount and Waiver Policy

Review Voucher: We offer a discount of £35 vouchers to reviewers as a token of appreciation with an expiry date of  12 months. For details, click  here


We wholeheartedly support the Research4Life Access to Health Research Program. For articles presenting original research, authors whose primary funder is in the HINARI Group A countries receive a 65% discount, while authors whose primary funder is in the HINARI Group B countries receive a 35% discount. The following countries from Group B, "Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan," are not eligible for discounts. But authors from these countries can also apply for the discount. If no formal funding was received, the source country will be determined by the country of origin of the majority of the authors' institutions. If there is no majority country, the corresponding author's primary affiliation country will determine waiver eligibility.

Institutional Funding opportunities

APC fees for open-access journals are an accepted way to defray publication costs, and most institutions have mechanisms and funding sources to cover publication costs in high-quality open-access journals. Contact your institution, department, or funder for information on APC subsidies for open-access publications. As your department benefits directly or indirectly from article publication, we're confident it will be willing to pay the APC fee in the absence of extramural funding. How do I get APC funding?

Refund Policy

Once an article has been accepted for publication, an Article Processing Charge is due. The submitting author assumes responsibility for the Article Processing Charge (APC), and we will not issue refunds of any kind. For others, read the complete policy.

English Editing Services

A 10% discount on English editing services is available through ICRP. If alternative professional services were used, proof of English editing is required.

Journal Publication Expenses

  • Triaging: Filtering of papers upon submission by internal staff and editorial board members.
  • Organization of peer review: We provide a high degree of assistance to academic editors so that they can only focus on editorial decisions. We employ in-house editors to invite reviewers, collect review reports, communicate with authors and reviewers, correspond with authors about revisions, and more.
  • Production: copy-editing, typesetting, XML, language editing, and PDF conversion. The APC includes minor English editing by native English speakers. The APC does not cover extensive English editing.
  • Proofreading: corresponding with authors to approve the final text and requesting any missing information.
  • Other editorial assistance: handling any questions and requests for support before submission, during the editorial and peer-review process, or post-publication.
  • Journal Management & Development: In-house Managing Editors track key performance indicators of the journal and monitor competing journals and trends in the field. They also provide reports and hold discussions with the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board.
  • Indexing & Archiving: We have a dedicated team that works to continuously expand post-publication coverage of all our journals within the main academic databases, scope-specific databases, and country-specific journal ranking lists.
  • Digital preservation: This Journal is digitally preserved cover-to-cover by Lockss and CLOCKSS, ensuring long-term archival of all of our publications.

Marketing and Communication Expenses

We allocate part of our income to the promotion of journals and articles through sponsorships of conferences, scholarly society events, and other promotional activities, as well as a series of awards to support researchers.