Our Two-Million-Dollar Journal!

It’s exactly a year since I pointed out that the Open Journal of Astrophysics had saved the astrophysics research community worldwide a sum in excess of a million dollars in publication costs. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publishing a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) is now £2356. Converting that to dollars at current rates (£1=$1.36) gives about $3200 per paper. As of today, 25th August 2026, the Open Journal of Astrophysics has published 632 articles. Using the dollar cost of an MNRAS APC as a benchmark – many journals charge more – this means that we have now saved the global astrophysics community over $2M (for a total outlay of around $15K). Yes, we are still a small journal but the size of that figure should help you understand how much money is being wasted globally on publishing fees that could instead be spent on actual research. It’s good to see that more and more researchers are seeing the light and switching to Diamond Open…