Publication charges policy

PSSR has been managed and run by a non-profit trust titled as ORIENTS SOCIAL RESEARCH CONSULTANCY (OSRC). There are many journals whose publishing costs and all other relevant expenses are covered by other sources, like sponsoring a society, organization other groups, think tanks, so don’t charges publication charges. There is no any source of income or financial assistance from any other organization or government entity to sponsor the PSSR expenses. PSSR is striving and heeding to be indexed in SSCI (JCR-Master list) very soon. But it is very gigantic task that there is no social sciences journal in Pakistan which is indexed in SSCI. We are supposed to meet up the international and global academia rather to focus on regional or local. Hence to meet such stander in financial and academic scope of authors, PSSR recommends the very nominal publication charges.

Publication charges are bit unusual in Pakistan by the local journals. Consequently, the authors are not used to the assistances. Therefore, various circles regarding the article charges following by PSSR having speculated many queries, ambiguities and misperceptions. In this perspective the Board of trustees assigned a special task to the editorial Board of PSSR to come up with a publication charges policy encircling the worldwide major publication houses, research group and research houses. Furthermore, the board was directed to pay special attention by giving relief as much as possible to the Ph. D scholars and young researchers from Pakistan while drafting the policy.

Introduction

Publications are not without costs. Subscription journals manage the cost by fee to access the contents. An open access content is freely accessible and available; therefore, the costs are recoup by through publication policy. Journals utilize a variety of ways to generate the income require the journal publishing costs, peer reviewers and advisory body’s dues.

Funding sources

Although the authors are responsible for making or arranging payment of the publication charges in most cases they can rely on their institutions and funders for financial support. These bodies can cover publication charges in a variety of ways for example by establishing Open Access (OA) fund, making part of their Journal funding. In order to support sustainable open access publishing there are many approaches to pay the due charges. These charges are usually had to pay by the authors’ institutions or research funders. But where will go the author or researcher having no facility or a proper funder. Cogent OA  (Taylor and Francis-Informal Group) pioneered a new module of financial contribution to pay the publication charges, titled as “Freedom Articles Publishing Charges”. It allows authors to choose how much to contribute towards the publication charges of their research in open access journals. PSSR operates freedom APC model only for Ph. D, MS/M. Phil scholars. The said model was approved for the purpose to encourage the research in Pakistan.

PSSR publication charges modes

PSSR charges are levied in two layers/spectrum i.e

1. Article processing charges (pre-acceptance) –APC-I
2. Article publishing charges (post-acceptance)-APC-II

Description

Article submission is totally free. Once the article has submitted, the author will be awarded with acknowledgement of receipt article. Then the article will go through the pre-editorial review that is totally free of cost. Pre-editorial review mean to check up and scrutinize the submitted article on the very basic criteria of PSSR publishing policy, it includes:

Scope

Non repository ------------------- (10% or below than 10)

Basic format (authors strength and citation style etc)

Abstract and key words

1. Article processing charges (pre-acceptance) –APC-I

It constitutes about 45% of the whole process charges, for permanent, instant, all inclusive and worldwide access to the full article text the publication charges covers:

Editorial work: administrative support, commissioning content, editorial layout, journal development, and correspondence with the authors, reviewers and referees.

Review and evaluation: editorial review, triple blind review, foreign evaluation (2 international and 2 national referees).

Technical infrastructure and innovation: development, maintenance and operation of online journal system and websites and coordination among the editorial board.

Production of articles: formatting and markup of articles.

Note: article processing charges (pre-acceptance) APC-1 Does not depict the acceptance of the article for publication by any means.

1. Article Publishing charges (post Acceptance)-APC

It constitutes of 55% of the whole process charges. Publication charges covers

Marketing of journal and content: making sure readers and authors know about the work published in the title.

Promotion on various mediums: content advertising via various world recognized forums and groups, data bases, research software, and social media

Customer service: responding to authors and readers

Circulation: published contents circulation in the relevant circle for enhancing citations.

Production of articles: inclusion in abstracting, indexing, aggregating, linking, uploading in world-class reputable research databases, directories and bibliographies.

Publication Charges

Category	Submission 45 %	Publishing 65%
Pakistani	Rs. 7000 (Non-refundable)	33000
Foreign	US $ 80 (Non-refundable)	US$ 260

Waiving: if an author would like that their article to be published under a gold open access model, but cannot afford the APC, then individual waiver requests are considered on a case to case basis and may be granted in cases of genuine need.  Authors who are eligible for such concession include those who have won any national excellence award. Undergraduates with quality manuscripts, orphan, special persons handicapped and those whose parents and siblings are martyred/ affected by war on terror.

For any queries please feel free to contact via:

Email: editor@pssr.org.pk