2026 APC Information

The list below aims to elaborate on the categories presented in the “Where your fees go” donut chart, first distributed at AAS 247.  As a non-profit scholarly society, we work to reduce costs wherever possible to help our contributors put more money into their science and our community.

The bullets below correlate to the post “Focusing on Value — 102 Things Journal Publishers Do (2018 Update)” published on The Scholarly Kitchen.  For more information on any of the headlines, please refer to the corresponding entry within the blog post.

AAS Publishing Staff & Editorial Board Costs (42%)

AAS Publishing staff salaries and associated costs
  • Tracking of submissions throughout
  • Tracking changes in the authorship environment
  • Plagiarism detection
  • Recruitment and retention of editors and reviewers
  • Manage statistical reviewers and reviews
  • Training of editors
  • Management of peer review process
  • Editorial board meetings
  • Implement and enforce editorial policies and procedures
  • Compliance
  • Dealing with data
  • Vendor management
  • Media relations and publicity
  • Managing and protecting editorial records
  • Comply with privacy, email CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and other regulations affecting publishing

Stipends for the 41 individuals on the editorial board

  • Audience/field detection and cultivation
  • Rejection of submissions (and in some cases multiple rejections)
  • Acceptance of submissions
  • Training of peer reviewers
  • Experimentation with peer review

Publishing Services from IOP Publishing (34%)

  • Establish, integrate, upgrade, and monitor infrastructure systems and contracts
  • Copy-editing, proofreading, and styling of materials
  • Language and substantive editing
  • Art handling
  • Multimedia handling
  • Layout and composition
  • Design print and various online versions
  • XML generation and DTD migration
  • Format migrations
  • Tagging
  • DOI registration
  • Search engine optimization
  • Search engine marketing
  • Integrate and track metrics and, increasingly, altmetrics
  • Vendor management
  • Media relations and publicity
  • Depositing content and data
  • Integrating new standards
  • Third-party licensing and negotiation
  • Hosting and archiving
  • Platform upgrades and migrations
  • Native search engine improvements
  • Implementing and managing interlinking services
  • Analytics and abuse monitoring
  • Comply with privacy, email CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and other regulations affecting publishing

AAS Publication Support Fund (15%)

Other (9%)

Board of Trustees mandated surplus
  • Publisher migrations
One-off Board of Trustees initiatives
  • Journal launch and registration
  • Funding of new initiatives, books, journals, and educational initiatives (3-5 years typically before break-even, and even longer before payback)
  • Conduct market research
Journals development reserve fund
  • Plan and create strategies for the future
  • Engage in product development
  • Experiment with new technologies