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Is there a way we can get money for our research paper? Do research journals pay us for a research paper? Or can we sell the research paper?

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  • I've heard that people in some business schools get bonuses for the papers they publish, in addition to their salary. For an article in a good journal, it can be a four-digit amount.
    – Federico Poloni
    Commented Jan 18, 2015 at 17:20
  • You can win prizes for (more or less) outstanding papers, which comes close to earning money (compare top athletes who live from prize money instead of salary).
    – Mark
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 12:54

8 Answers 8

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Certainly Yes. There are two ways of earning money from publication:

  1. Indirect as @seteropere explains by improving your visibility and getting higher chance of being recruited in higher quality institute with higher payment.

  2. Direct: In many academic or even industrial institutes, researchers are being paid and are bound to perform research and publish paper in certain journals or conferences (mostly journal). If they fail, either they will be fired or will be punished. In order to avoid such experience, many are hiddenly searching for an opportunity to buy a paper in high price. Moreover, there are some universities that pay incentive to publish in journals (like US$ 2000) for each paper published. For instance, I know several people at such universities that need to improve their world ranking via publication and hence pay good money to publish in high-quality journals. But, selling or buying paper is considered unethical because we believe research is something we cannot buy. If we can buy research, it will not be research and will be a project.

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    Punished! How? :)
    – Sensebe
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 15:51
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    what if I have papers I want to sell? how can I enter this market?
    – Forever Mozart
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 17:30
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can we earn money through a research publication?

Certainly Yes.

Good publications make you a stronger candidate when apply to grants. It also help you in securing a job; if you do not have one. Also, collaborating with industry could be another way for earning money. Selling publication is something I never heard in my field (computer science). I do not even think it is possible in other fields.

If you are looking only for money then doing research is one of the bad choices you have.

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    My field is Computer Science.I am a masters student.I am also a software Engineer.I thought doing masters would increase my value in the industry.Like an MBA is more valuable than a BBA.Clearly MS can't increase my earnings :(
    – zzzzz
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 10:37
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    @iOsBoy while in CS it is unlikely you will be able to "sell" your publications, graduate studies in CS can certainly be valuable, just like in business.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 10:52
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    While it's not expected of people that they sell papers, can they sell manuscripts if they are in dire need of money - with money back if it gets rejected? Would it be illegal?
    – user13107
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 11:33
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    @user13107 in the UK the REF is a nation wide assessment of the research outputs of universities that occurs every 5 or so years. Leading up to this universities "buy" publications all the time by offering the authors money to change jobs. This type of academic poaching happens and is just slightly less extreme than what you are suggesting.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 11:51
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    @user13107: There's nothing illegal about selling a manuscript, but buying or selling authorship would be unethical. If X is credibly accused of selling a manuscript to Y, who submitted it for publication with Y listed as an author, then it will severely damage X's career, because it will difficult to give an innocent explanation of what X thought Y was going to do with the manuscript. To the extent any manuscripts are sold, it is either with the greatest secrecy or by sellers who are outside of academia and don't worry about career consequences from accusations of unethical behavior.
    – Anonymous Mathematician
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 15:22
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I have never heard of a field where journals pay the authors for articles. In the humanities original research is often published as books and publishers will often pay, or at least provide a commission, for books.

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In Germany, the "VG Wort" collects copyright fees put on copy machines, electronic library copies, etc., and redistributes these fees to authors.

Authors of research papers published in print can give note about their publications to the VG Wort and will then participate in the distribution of these fees. The calculation of what each author gets depends on the length of the articles and the number of authors, and in my experience one should expect a one-time payment of about 20 to 40 Euro per journal article.

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  • Is that €20–40 per article a one-time lump sum payment, a recurring annual payment, or the total sum of smaller annual payments?
    – Psychonaut
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 16:47
  • @Abra not sure about that, but if the proceedings of your conference are available in print at two or more German libraries, they may qualify. This is also a requirement for journals btw.
    – silvado
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 22:47
  • Oh wow. We've got the same system here in Austria, I got to look into this. 20€ isn't much but hey, 1-2 beers for the authors.
    – user64845
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 23:05
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Also, Patents.

If you register your idea as a patent, then everybody who wants to use your idea has to pay to you. However, universities (companies) usually claim the intellectual property of the patents, which means the inventor does not get that much incentive out of a patent. It is an exception if you work independent or self employed. Also, you can negotiate with university to have keep the intellectual property of your invention or discoveries.

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  • re "negotiate"; any real examples?
    – Pacerier
    Commented Oct 17, 2023 at 8:39
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According to this Scholarly Open Access blog entry, the Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra: The Business and Economics Research Journal pays US$2500 for each paper published and also pays US$500 for each peer review. It also seems that the Journal of Information Ethics used to pay US$50 per article published.

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  • @Abra, thank you for your comment. It seems that the blog entry has been removed (and not just moved). The website of the Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra doesn't seem to mention any payments to authors or reviewers, so perhaps they changed their policy since I posted my answer.
    – JRN
    Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 1:19
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Certain types of papers can be supported by journals. These can include invited review articles, where the journal specifically seeks out the author to publish something on their field of expertise. The payments are usually minimal relative to the work required - on the order of US$300-500 - and are sometimes referred to as an "honorarium."

The key element here is that this money is paid because the journal specifically wants a paper from that author - presumably because they expect the work to be prestigious or highly cited.

This is by no means universal, but it has happened to me.

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Yes. Through thesis or reasearch. For example the nasa discovers a new planet. Then after that some publishing companies will buy that article regarding that and it will spread throughout the world. Sorry for the bad english

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    This is not how academic publishing works and seems to be ignorant of the other answers. Do you have any example where this happened?
    – Wrzlprmft ♦
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 16:49
  • Just an example.
    – QueenCarmella08
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 23:13
  • Did you perhaps forget to add a link to your above comment (or your post)?
    – Wrzlprmft ♦
    Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 6:35

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