Article Processing Charges (APC) Information
General Information on KMF’s Article Processing Charges (APC)
KMF publishes all its journals in full open access, meaning unlimited use and reuse of articles, in addition to giving credit to the authors. All our articles are published under a Creative Commons Law. Authors pay a one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the costs of peer review administration and management, professional production of articles in PDF and other formats, and dissemination of published papers in various venues, in addition to other publishing functions. There are no charges for rejected articles, no submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures or supplementary data. Some items (Editorials, Corrections, Addendums, Retractions, Comments, etc.) are published free of charge.
Journal Specific APCs
Area of Study | Low and Middle Income Countries Currency USD($) | High Income Countries Currency USD($) |
Social Science | 100.00 | 300 |
Business & Commerce | 100.00 | 300 |
Humanities & Media Arts | 100.00 | 300 |
Education | 100.00 | 300 |
Psychology | 100.00 | 300 |
Public & Mental Health | 200.00 | 300 |
Sciences | 250.00 | 500 |
Medicine | 250.00 | 500 |
Engineering | 250.00 | 500 |
Computer & Technology | 250.00 | 500 |
Miscellaneous | 250.00 | 500 |
Here is a breakdown of how our APCs are used. In calculating these values, we have followed recommendations from the Fair Open Access Alliance, an organization that promotes sustainable and transparent scholarly open access publishing. This also makes KMF fully compliant with the requirements of Plan S, a key funder initiative to promote Open Access.
Service functions | % of total Amount |
A. Publishing Operations & Projects | 19% |
B. Journal publication | 39% |
C. Editorial Fees | 2% |
D. Marketing and Communication | 7% |
E. General | 3% |
F. Discounts & waivers | 21% |
G. Surplus | 9% |
Total publication fee per article | 100% |
A. Publishing Operations & Projects
KMF develops and maintains its own electronic submission and peer-review website. We also run several platforms to offer different types of services for scholars.
B. Journal publication
Triaging—Filtering of papers upon submission by internal staff and editorial board members.
Organization of peer-review—KMF provides 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 revision, etc.
Production—including copy-editing, typesetting, copy-editing XML and PDF conversion, and language editing. KMF provides English editing by native English speakers for all accepted papers, included in the APC.
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—The in-house Managing Editors track key performance indicators of each journal, monitor competing journals and the trends in the field. They also provide reports and hold discussions with the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board.
Indexing & archiving—KMF has a team dedicated to indexing relations who advise on the eligibility of a journal for application to be indexed in over 80 databases. Our team communicate closely with the contact persons at the different databases and receive regular updates on the status of applications. We dedicate time to keep ourselves up to date on any changes in the evaluation criteria or application procedure.
Long term preservation—KMF supports long-term preservation of all its articles.
C. Editorial Fees
KMF pays a travel grant or stipend to all Editors-in-Chief and a share of revenue to the societies whose journals it publishes.
D. Marketing and Communication
KMF allocates part of its 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.
E. General
Management & administration includes cost related to salaries of non-editorial staff and other business costs. They include all the fees paid by KMF for membership in publishing organizations. Most membership fees are based on the level of income or size of the publisher. KMF is a debt-free company and is not repaying loans or investments.
F. Discounts and waivers
KMF waives 20%-25% of its content every year. We are committed to supporting the transition of all research to full open access, so offer APC waivers or discounts to some authors. In addition, we waive and offer discounts from 15% (of the total APCs in a journal) in our most established journals up to 100% in our new journals or humanities journals. Members of societies affiliated to a KMF journal benefit from a discount as well as authors affiliated to institutions participating in our Institutional Open Access Program.
For journals in fields with low levels of funding, where authors typically do not have funds available, APCs are typically waived and cross-subsidized from fields for which more APC funding is available. For authors from low- and middle-income countries, waivers or discounts may be granted on a case-by-case basis. Applications submitted before article submission are assessed by the Managing Editor based on the quality of the research article and the authors’ ability to pay.
Avoiding Surcharges on Submitted Articles
Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use KMF’s English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions. If you use an alternative service that provides a confirmation certificate, please send a copy to the Editorial Office. Authors from developing countries should consider registration with Author Aid, a global research community that provides networking, mentoring, resources and training for researchers in developing countries.
Funding of APCs and BPCs
Many funding agencies and institutions explicitly allow the use of research grants for the payment of APCs and BPCs for publishing open access articles and books. For more information on APC and BPC funding Click here.
Discounts on APCs
Waivers may be granted at the Publisher’s discretion and should be discussed with the editorial office when submitting the article. The editorial decision making is decoupled from the authors’ ability to pay the Processing Charges, however authors should consider in advance whether they have sufficient funds to cover the full APC/BPC. KMF also offers discount vouchers to selected reviewers.
Accepted Currencies
We accept payments in US Dollars (USD), Euro (EUR), British Pound Sterling (GBP). Upon acceptance, the corresponding/submitting author will receive an e-mail with a link where the currency of the invoice can be changed.
Accepted Methods of Payment
KMF currently supports the following payment methods:
Bank account transfer/deposit
MTC (Western Union, Money Gram and so on)
Mobile Banking
Online Payment by PayPal
Cheques Payable to KMF
For more detailed information on how to pay an invoice, please see our Payment Instructions.
APCs are payable within 5 to 10 business days. Invoices are emailed shortly after acceptance to the payment contact provided by the authors. Only official invoices issued by kmf@kmf-publishers.com are valid. We do not authorize any third party to collect the APCs. KMF is the sole service provider and cannot be held liable for actions by third parties.
For wire transfers, we ask the customer to pay the fees for both the sender and the recipient bank, so that KMF receives the full invoiced amount.