Is there a charge for publishing papers in academic journals?

Is there a charge for publishing periodical papers? Why do some people get paid to publish papers, while others have to pay?

A good periodical can maintain its business only by selling and advertising, and it requires high quality manuscripts. Therefore, the publication of the paper depends on the manuscript fee, and the poor journals depend on the page fee. At the same time, contributors have a demand for manuscripts, and naturally they have to pay a page fee.

Generally speaking, the publication fee refers to the cash fee charged by the editorial department of a regular academic journal to the author after publishing his article. Publishing fees are generated in the prosperous environment of academic journals and academic research; Judging from the constituent elements and procedures of the page fee itself, the page fee is a voluntary contract behavior of both parties, which is a slap in the face and there is no violation of law and discipline; But fundamentally speaking, the publishing fee of academic journals is rooted in the unreasonable scientific research evaluation mechanism in China. "Page fee" has long been an open secret of domestic academic circles, and the paper industry chain with page fee as the core has developed to a considerable scale. According to the latest media data, although the number of periodical papers published by scientific and technical personnel in China ranks among the top in the world, the average citation rate is 100, which ranks outside the world. The reason can be said that the page fee has played a great role in boosting.

At present, most magazines need to charge for publishing academic papers, and a few magazines don't, but most of them are difficult to publish or need to queue up, and some publications even come out for 1 or 2 years. Let me talk about their way of making profits:

The first way of profit: intermediary websites organize a large number of manuscripts through their own channels and means, so that they have the capital to negotiate with magazines-asking magazines to give them an "agent price" or "contribution price" lower than the normal page charge standard, so that intermediary websites have profit space.

The second way to make a profit: some magazines don't set a double charging standard, and treat ordinary authors and intermediary websites equally, while intermediary websites need to charge a fee slightly higher than the magazine charging standard to make a profit.

The third way of making profits: some comrades who need to publish their papers may entrust some paper intermediary websites to help find some gunmen to write manuscripts, which will generate a writing fee, which is also an important profit point of the paper intermediary websites.

There are other modes, such as the author's manuscript is difficult to be published in some high-demand journals, and the paper intermediary website can help the author find experts or editors to polish the article, so that the article can be published and a "finishing fee" can be charged.

Of course, the above are the profit models of some law-abiding paper intermediary websites, while those who are simply bluffing may be much darker.

There must be a reason to exist. After all, many authors don't know much about periodicals and need people who know how to guide them. Someone needs to build a bridge between the author and the journal. However, due to the low entry threshold and uneven quality of the intermediary industry, many situations have hurt the author's vital interests, so that the reputation of the industry is getting worse and worse now. Although I am not an intermediary, I have close contact with the intermediary websites of various papers. I sincerely hope that all the friends who are doing paper intermediary websites can consciously safeguard the image of the industry and let the industry develop healthily. Don't let the author complain whenever he mentions the word intermediary. Without the author, the industry will lose the source of survival and the foundation of development, which will be the biggest sorrow of the industry.