by Matthew Kershis, Data Analyst and Sara Rouhi, Director of Open Science and Publishing Innovation
We’ve built cost transparency into our new model, AIP Fusion. Here, we explain how we calculated our true 2024 cost per article, and why sharing it supports a more inclusive, fair open science environment for researchers.
Purpose before profit
AIP Publishing is committed to building a more inclusive and vibrant future for the physical sciences. Open science can accelerate global progress by breaking barriers to open and fair research communication, ensuring that knowledge is widely shared and can drive meaningful change.
This is central to our role as a Purpose-led publisher. We don’t operate for commercial gain but to advance the physical sciences for the benefit of humanity. That includes supporting our member societies – distinguished scholarly associations representing some of the most trusted voices in acoustics, physics education, rheology, materials science, and crystallography – as well as our parent organization, American Institute of Physics (AIP). Together, we work to ensure the global community of physical scientists thrives.
Transparency is a pillar of open science
We recently shared our strategic approach to open science and why this is so important to our mission. Our four pillars – increasing transparency, improving access, embracing difference, and ensuring sustainability – all underpin the new open science business model we have launched, AIP Fusion. Transparency is essential to trust, and we wanted to be intentional about showing what publishing really costs.
Calculating a cost per article
Publishing is often seen as simply “getting research online.” But the truth is, publishing is an ecosystem of services and experts that make research trustworthy, accessible, and impactful.
To calculate our true cost per article, we drew on live company data across every part of AIP Publishing. We worked line by line through our budget to allocate costs where they belong, from editorial oversight and peer review, to production, dissemination, technology, and partnerships. These are not margins. This is a true dollar calculation of the full cost it takes AIPP to produce each article we publish.
Some of this process was inevitably more of an art than a science: several costs could easily fall under multiple categories, while others didn’t neatly fit into any of the pre-existing models for calculating a cost per article.
For example, we chose to separate out the costs for supporting our publishing partner member societies. These organizations have chosen to partner with us over other commercial solutions. We intentionally pull out the cost of that work as a sign of our purpose-led commitment: we support science by supporting these societies.
We also distributed strategic functions (such as our executive offices) across the services they support, rather than inflating overhead. We have tried, as much as possible, to ensure that every budget line of the business is indicated within the segment of what it actually does.
Peer review is an excellent example of hidden complexity. We do much more than ‘manage’ reviewer feedback: we recruit world-class editors; provide regular support, tools, and training; send thousands of reviewer requests; and actively invest in systems to make peer review fair and rigorous. We also absorb the enormous cost of managing the thousands of articles that are not accepted for publication.
Research Integrity is another fast-growing cost. We are investing heavily in research integrity infrastructure, training, and technology to stay ahead of emerging threats to the scholarly record. This commitment ensures that AIP Publishing journals remain trusted sources of reliable scientific knowledge.
When you add all of our services together, the cost of publishing a single peer-reviewed article with us in 2024 was about $2,700.
Reinvesting in the physical sciences
The published cost per article does not include any margin or mark up. But just covering costs for articles is not enough. Our purpose, as part of AIP, is to serve the physics community and to reinvest in that community. That includes supporting student programs, engaging in community research that impacts policy, preserving the history of physics, and funding society activities. Researchers are at the heart of everything we do, and advancing the scientific enterprise goes well beyond article publication.
So how does that translate into AIP Fusion pricing?
To cover both operational costs for our publishing and what we need to fulfil our mission, AIP Fusion combines the two:
- First, we look at an institution’s publishing history, specifically the average number of articles (by corresponding author affiliation) over the past three years. We multiply that by $2,700 to calculate the value of our peer review, dissemination, and discovery services – everything required for trustworthy publishing.
- Then we add a shared community fee (SCF), which reflects how much the institution’s researchers are using and downloading content. This is not a fee for usage, but rather a mechanism for assigning each institution’s SCF. This ensures fairness between high- and lower-usage institutions. The SCF enables the margin we need to reinvest in our business and our parent, AIP, to enable their work.
- Finally, with the launch of the new model, no institution’s price will increase or decrease by more than 5% in the first year. That way, the model is both fair and predictable.
Put simply: institutions pay in proportion to the value they receive, across all AIPP services.
Towards a sustainable open science future
Our goal with AIP Fusion is to empower libraries and researchers, creating a more open, fair, and impactful research environment. Understanding our value as a series of services that ensure trustworthy science – not just getting articles online – helps our authors, institutions, and partners see the full value of their investment in advancing science.
Cost transparency is more than a number. It is part of how we build trust, demonstrate accountability, and ensure that our publishing enterprise continues to serve the global physics community.
Learn more about what goes into producing an article at AIP Publishing.