Financing model

Traffic Safety Research is a Fair Open Access journal, meaning that all incomes are used exclusively to sustain its daily operation and strategic development (no profit intended).

The TSR journal receives some crucial services, such as web-hosting, DOI registration, and plagiarism control through support from the libraries of the Lund University, the Delft University of Technology, and the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute.

However, our ambition to keep the highest standards in academic publishing implies additional costs. These cover:

The TSR's long-term vision is to become a truly fair publisher by making the journal free at any point of use for authors and readers, while the costs being covered through general long-term sponsorship agreements (see p. 4 in the Fair Open Access principles). While some progress in this direction has been done, we are not fully there yet.

Currently, there are two main sources to financially sustain the TSR journal:

  • production fees
  • support from sponsor organizations.

Publication fees

The authors of accepted manuscripts are asked to pay a production fee. The fee is kept intentionally low and is directly based on the upfront cost to prepare an ‘average’ TSR article for publication. Currently, the production fee is:

  • SEK 5 800*.

* Check the current exchange rates here.

Authors from the following countries are eligible for a fee waiver (eligibility is determined by the country of the main affiliation of the first author):

Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Micronesia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vietnam, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe†.

† The list is based on the World Bank's country classification by income, with the weaver offered to low- and lower-middle-income countries. Since the list is not static, it is recommended to always check the current country's status at the World Bank web page.

Authors affiliated with a TSR sponsor organisation are normally covered by a special agreement that exempts them from paying the production fee. The eligibility is determined by the first author and his/her main affiliation.

Sponsor organizations

An organization may become a TSR sponsor by subscribing to cover publication costs for a certain number of articles per year. Sponsorship is normally associated with a special agreement exempting the individual authors affiliated with the sponsoring organization from paying the production fee.

The following sponsorship levels are available:

  • Double-platinum sponsor (20 articles): SEK 116 000‡
  • Platinum sponsor (10 articles): SEK 58 000‡
  • Golden sponsor (7 articles): SEK 40 600‡
  • Silver sponsor (5 articles): SEK 29 000‡
  • Bronze sponsor (3 articles): SEK 17 400‡.

‡ Check the current exchange rates here.

Special agreements deal with the article production costs only. During the review stage, the editors are explicitly instructed to disregard in their decision making the fact of the author(s) being affiliated with the sponsor organization. The same quality criteria apply to all submissions.

The current list of the TSR sponsors can be found here. In case you are interested to become a sponsor, please get in contact with the journal editorial team.