Financing model

Traffic Safety Research is Fair Open Access journal, meaning that all incomes are used exclusively to sustain its daily operation and strategic development.

The journal receives some crucial services free-of-charge, such as web-hosting, plagiarism control, registration in CrossRef and other databases, being supported by 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 (a rough share of the total budget is given in the parentheses):

  • Copyediting, including conversion of all manuscripts to the JATS XML, a highly structured machine-readable text format and the current ‘golden standard’ in academic publishing (85%).
  • Subscription to special software for working with JATS XML (11%).
  • Membership in strategically important organizations, such as Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (2%).
  • Education of the journal staff (1%).
  • Journal promotional activities (1%).

There are two main sources of income for the TSR journal:

  • voluntary publication fees
  • support by sponsor organizations.

Voluntary publication fees

The TSR does not enforce any fixed Article Processing Charges (APC). Instead, the authors may choose themselves the level of ‘fair compensation’ for the services they have received—on a fully voluntary basis. For example, authors from low-income countries might not have resources to pay any fee at all; authors of articles with complex formatting (e.g. many references, tables, appendices) may consider a higher compensation level.

The authors may select from the following fee rates:

  • None
  • SEK 2 500 (≈ EUR 250†)
  • SEK 5 000 (≈ EUR 500†)
  • SEK 7 500 (≈ EUR 750†)
  • SEK 10 000 (≈ EUR 1 000†).

† Check the current exchange rates here.

The upfront cost to prepare an ‘average’ TSR article for publication is about EUR 500.

It is important to point out that the discussion about the fee is initiated only after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. The editor decisions are by no means affected by the prospective to receive some money. The processing time and the level of service provided to the authors are not affected by the chosen fee rate either.

Sponsor organizations

An organization may become a TSR sponsor by subscribing to cover publications costs for a certain number of articles per year. The following sponsorship levels are available:

  • Platinum sponsor (10 articles): EUR 5 000
  • Golden sponsor (7 articles): EUR 3 500
  • Silver sponsor (5 articles): EUR 2 500
  • Bronze sponsor (3 articles): EUR 1 500.

Authors affiliated with an organization that is a TSR sponsor are not expected to pay additional publication fees (up to the number of articles defining the sponsorship level). The fact that an author of a considered manuscript is affiliated with a sponsor will not affect the editorial decisions or the processing time.

The current list of the TSR’s sponsors and supporters can be found here.

In case you are interested to become a sponsor, please get in contact with the journal editorial team.