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I have served as a reviewer for allied academies and decided to submit an article myself, but couldn't find any info regarding APCs. After some months I was told that my article is accepted and I have to pay a huge amouth of 1406 Euros (sorry but I do believe it's an insane amount of money I can't give especially for a journal without an impact factor). I wrote to the editors and accountant I want to withdraw the manuscript for it is impossible for me to pay (this is more than 2 times my salary), so they asked me how much can I pay, and I honestly answered that so far I have never paid more than 100 USD (my university can not help me in paying the manuscript). So today I have received an email stating: "Following the standard practice of Open Access publishing, an author is obligated to pay the processing charges for the submitted manuscript after acceptance. If you would still decide to withdraw the paper, we request you to bear the expenditure incurred by the publisher. We ensure you that we will retract the Article from Website after processing the withdrawal charges of USD 119$. This is the minimum fee and maximum discount given to the Author." Sorry but why should I have to pay anything? It's not like they have paid the reviewes (I have never been paid for that)... I really don't understand the situation. If I pay they will withdraw the article if I do't then what? They'll publish it?

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    First line of the business's Wikipedia page: "Allied Academies is a reportedly-fraudulent corporation chartered under the laws of North Carolina".
    – Luigi
    Mar 24, 2018 at 13:26
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    Also, it seems oddly convenient that the "withdrawal fee" is just about what you said you'd be able to afford
    – Luigi
    Mar 24, 2018 at 13:28
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    @Luigi, You should post your comment as an answer. It's a very short answer, but it's pretty definitive and it should help other academics who run into "withdrawal charges" from journals without having been told about it initially.
    – Stephan Branczyk
    Mar 24, 2018 at 16:06
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    If you haven't already transferred the copyright, then I think you still own the copyright of the paper and you can prohibit them from publishing it. If they publish it anyway, suing them would cost more than 119 dollars, but the real purpose of prohibiting them from publishing the paper is not to prevent publication but to make it possible to submit the paper to an honest journal.
    – Andreas Blass
    Mar 24, 2018 at 16:37
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    "a friend of mine asked me to be reviewer" You should follow up with this "friend". Why do they ask you to review for a scam journal?
    – Roland
    Mar 25, 2018 at 8:14

1 Answer 1

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Don't pay them a penny/euro

This is a scam. Cut all ties with this journal/company. I've never heard of any reputable journal charging thousands (or even hundreds) to publish an article.

In the future google the journal name first. There is also

https://beallslist.weebly.com/

to help filter out scam publishers.

Rules of thumb for vetting publishers

1) Don't pay to get published. Journals generally work on a subscription method where subscribers pay administration overhead.

2) If you do have to pay, it should be a conference paper with a date, and location. Some conferences require that at least one of the paper's authors attend. Be sure there are a date and city attached.

3) Paper retractions/withdrawals are generally big deals triggered by incompetent or unethical research practices. Fees associated with this would obviously be a hindrance to accurate reporting by authors.

Edit: You're not the only person this has happened to. See https://web.archive.org/web/20130903150917/http://www.jfdp.org/forum/forum_docs/1013jfdp1040_1_032912094346.pdf

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    I've never heard of any reputable journal charging thousands (or even hundreds) to publish an article Then I guess you've never heard of what "reputable" commercial publishers try to pass off as "open access" (take a look at this easily accessible example, not to say other publishers fare better). In this case it does appear to be a scam, true.
    – user9646
    Mar 24, 2018 at 16:58
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    There are plenty of places that are quite happy to publish whatever you want for a fee. In general, don't pay to get published.
    – sevensevens
    Mar 24, 2018 at 17:07
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    I should note that there's a small amount of nuance in your first point - many reputable journals have page or color charges.
    – Fomite
    Mar 24, 2018 at 20:23
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    There exist good open access journals that will ask you to pay to get published, for example PLOS One and PeerJ. Then there are scam publishers who try to disguise themselves as bona fide open access publishers. And there is a large gray zone in between.
    – Sylvain Ribault
    Mar 24, 2018 at 21:08
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    The main point of your answer is correct, however: There are reputable journals that do charge thousands of dollars for publication. Nature Communications jumps to mind. nature.com/ncomms/about/article-processing-charges
    – Anonymous Physicist
    May 29, 2018 at 20:25

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