Article Processing Charges & Waivers

Transparent author fees, discounts and refund conditions

AJIST follows a Gold Open Access publishing model. The costs associated with editorial administration, publication, hosting, archiving, preservation, and dissemination are supported in part through an Article Processing Charge (APC). Payment or waiver status does not influence editorial assessment, peer review, or manuscript acceptance.

1. Current Article Processing Charge

Authors based in India: INR 3,000

Authors based outside India: USD 50

Submission fee: Nil

2. When the APC Is Charged

The APC becomes payable only after a manuscript has been accepted following editorial assessment and peer review. Authors are not required to pay an APC for rejected manuscripts. Payment of an APC does not guarantee acceptance, expedited peer review, favourable editorial treatment, or publication.

3. Waivers and Discounts

AJIST provides a 50% APC discount for corresponding authors from Research4Life Group A countries, subject to the current Research4Life eligibility classification at the time of submission. The discount is based on the corresponding author's country information. Any other waiver or discount, if offered by CRI in an exceptional case, must be confirmed in writing before payment and is handled independently of editorial decision-making.

Research4Life eligibility criteria: https://www.research4life.org/access/criteria/

4. Requesting a Waiver or Discount

Authors seeking an applicable waiver or discount must make the request before APC payment and provide any information reasonably required by the publishing office. Fee-support requests are administered separately from editorial assessment and peer review.

5. Refund of Article Processing Charges

An APC refund may be considered when an error attributable to the publisher prevents publication of an accepted manuscript or when multiple APC payments are mistakenly made for the same manuscript.

Refunds are normally not issued when an author withdraws the manuscript after APC payment and publication processing has commenced, or when a published article is retracted because of plagiarism, copyright infringement, data fabrication, research misconduct, or another author-related breach of publication ethics.

6. Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit and remain independent of APC payment, waiver or discount eligibility, sponsorship, advertising, or other revenue considerations.

7. Open Access and Licence

Published articles are made immediately and permanently available online under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The copyright and licence terms are described on the separate Copyright & Licensing and Open Access Policy pages.