An APC (Article Processing Charge) is the fee which publishers require of authors, for the purpose of enabling their articles to be published as Open Access articles within subscription journals.
This fee tends to exist within journals that are commercially available, but also publish a number of Open Access articles within them.
So, while - at the reader end - they are able to obtain the article without payment, it's the article's author that bears the publishing cost (which is known as the Article Publishing Charge (or APC)
Source: Latrobe University https://latrobe.libguides.com/c.php?g=943423&p=6832591
Article Publishing Charges vary considerably.
A small sample of four publishers revealed the following range of costs.
Data source: Derived from respective publishers journal websites (Gold Open Access) - anonymised
Locating APCs: https://support.springer.com/en/support/solutions/articles/6000227571-find-the-apc-for-a-specific-journal
Various Publishers’ APC Policies: SpringerNature: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/journal-policies
Various Publishers’ Charges:
Public Library of Science: https://plos.org/publish/fees/
ELSEVIER: Article Processing Charge: https://www.elsevier.com/__data/promis_misc/article-publishing-charge.pdf
Springer Nature: Article Processing Charge: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/journals
Taylor & Francis: Article Processing Charge: https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis/choose-open/publishing-open-access-cost-finder/
An “often-voiced” critique of Article Publishing Charges (ie the "public purse" debate)
Image Source: Hochstenbach, Patrick "Yes, I told you"
https://openaccess.be/2012/10/24/yes-i-told-you-an-open-access-cartoon/ CC-BY
Open Access publishing is employed by (at least) two distinctive types of journal.
TYPE 1: JOURNALS THAT ARE FULLY OPEN ACCESS
Their characteristics are:
- They do not charge authors fees for publishing articles in the journal
- They do not charge subscription fees to individuals, Libraries, and various other organisations
- The articles and journals are fully and freely available on the web
TYPE 2: COMMERCIAL JOURNAL PUBLISHERS THAT PUBLISH SOME OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES
Their characteristics are:
- The situation is that commercially published journals tend to be available via subscription only
- Journal subscriptions are paid by organisations such as Libraries, Research Institutes, and others
- This enables people to obtain access to those journals - via their organisation's paid subscriptions
- In order to access articles within model, the readership require access to a subscribed journal
- This is usually done by via their membership to a Library, or via an employer's subscription
This is the point at which Article Processing Charges (APCs) come into play
- APCs are payments made authors - to commercial publishers - to enable their articles to be published
- The charges are associated with the publication and dissemination costs incurred by the publishers
Payment of APCs can be a source of vexation for researchers publishing OA articles in commercial journals that require an APC payment
Source: Open Access Australasia, 2021, "What are the different types of Open Access" https://oaaustralasia.org/2021/05/25/what-are-the-different-types-of-open-access/