Page charge waivers (PCW) for article processing charges (APC) may be granted for invited review articles, ASABE award-winning papers, and special collections in order to attract high-quality manuscripts that might not otherwise be published with ASABE but are likely to be highly cited.
ASABE community editors (CE) are able to grant a limited number of PCW for invited review articles and for papers that have received an ASABE award, such as the ITSC Paper Award, and are accepted for publication as journal articles. Community editors are limited to granting PCW only for invited review articles and award-winning papers within the allocation limits explained below. Qualifying papers must not have been previously published in a peer-reviewed journal. Papers that received an award after journal publication do not qualify for a PCW. There are no retroactive PCW for previously published articles.
Allocating page charge waivers
The total number of PCW available to each community are allocated for the calendar year based on that community’s number of billable articles published in the previous year’s journals. For example, if there were 300 billable journal articles published in a year, the number of PCW for the following year is 300 which is divided among the communities. Each billable article for a community creates one PCW for that community. PCW may not be transferred between communities.
PCW are allocated by calendar year and must be assigned to manuscripts within that calendar year or the first issue of the next year. If a community has fewer than five PCW available, they may assign any or all of the remainder to one article. Communities may carry over up to four pages of unused PCW from the previous calendar year.
Granting page charge waivers
Community editors identify the invited review articles or choose which of the ASABE award-winning papers that qualify for PCW. When granted, please email pagewaivers@asabe.org with the manuscript number and number of PCW. Each community’s publications committee, including the associate editors, may choose to be involved in this process. Headquarters staff or P-511 may also step in to resolve any difficulties that arise in interpreting the policy.
The community editor must inform headquarters staff of any PCW at the time it is assigned and identify the reason for the PCW (i.e., invited review article, award-winning paper, or special collection paper). If the PCW is assigned to a manuscript that is rejected or never finished, the PCW may not be reassigned to another manuscript unless it is done in the same calendar year as the assignment.
To create a strong incentive for authors to publish with us and to limit the administrative burden, the PCW for invited review articles and award-winning papers should be a minimum of five pages per manuscript. The community editor must not allocate page charge PCW beyond the community’s annual limit. Excess pages will not receive PCW.
The intent is to attract new, high-quality, highly citable articles, in addition to the content with full page charges.
Special collections
The current policy for special collections of journal articles are not be affected by the PCW policy. Collections should have at least four articles plus an introductory article. Each article in a special collection receives the first three pages free and one introductory article per collection receives the first eight pages free. Invited review articles and award-winning papers are typically not part of a special collection. In the rare cases when this happens, headquarters staff and the community editor determine the appropriate allocation of PCW.
Limited public access to journal articles
Public access is granted to a limited group of special collections, invited review articles, and award-winning papers that have been published as journal articles. Public access is for a limited time, related to impact factor, after which public access is removed. This policy should create a further incentive for invited review articles.
Public access is not equivalent to open access. Public access does not mean that the articles may be posted to other websites outside of what is already allowed by the copyright policy.
To be eligible for public access, an article must have received a PCW under the conditions specified above. Articles that have received PCW (i.e., invited review articles, award-winning articles, and special collection articles) will be publicly accessible for up to three calendar years, starting with the year of publication. The first year will likely be a partial year, while the second and third years will be full years (January to December). As a result, articles published earlier in the year will receive the most exposure.
For example, public access to special collections and invited review articles that were published in 2017 extends to the end of 2019. Introductory articles for collections will be made public access.