Over 40 editors of two Elsevier journals, NeuroImage and NeuroImage: Reports, have resigned in protest over excessively high and unsustainable author processing charges (APCs) for accepted manuscripts in these open access journals. APCs are a pay-to-publish model for open access journals, an alternative to content paywalled to readers. The APC for NeuroImage is US$3,450; NeuroImage: Reports charges $900, which will double to $1,800 from May 31st. For additional context, The Lancet Neurology, published by Elsevier, has an APC of $6,300; the fee at Nature Neuroscience, published by Springer Nature, is $11,690; and Human Brain Mapping, published by Wiley, charges $3,850.
These fees shift the burden of access to content from readers to authors. The editors who resigned from NeuroImage and NeuroImage: Reports took issue with the barrier these fees place on researcher/authors, particularly from institutions that are not well funded. They expressed to Elsevier that those fees and revenue were not justified by the costs of producing the journals. They have organized to publish a new journal, Imaging Neuroscience, with MIT Press. Publishing fees have not been announced, but are expected to be at least half of the fees charged by Elsevier, who will continue to publish NeuroImage and NeuroImage: Reports with new editors.
