ecancermedicalscience has gone from strength to strength in the past year and we are now publishing 130% more articles than in the previous year.  Our submission rate has risen by over 50% just in the last 12 months and we have taken on more staff to deal with the increased demand.  We have ensured that this does not affect our quality level - our rejection rate is currently 65%.

This success means that it is our priority to make sure that the journal is sustainable.  The estimated cost of £1000 per published article needs to be met, and we are committed to finding new ways of funding the journal.  In addition to this, the publication landscape has been changing over the last few years  - in many areas of the world, funding for open access publication has been greatly increased and most of the largest funders of biomedical research now mandate that the results of that research must be published in open access journals. 

The crux of the new initiative is “pay what you can afford”.  We are not charging a blanket author fee, rather we are asking authors, on publication of their article, to transfer the open access publication fee which is part of their funding to us in return for providing a professional publishing service.  We will still publish articles from authors for free who do not have access to this funding, as long as they pass the peer review process.

In this way, we are ensuring that we can carry on publishing research from developing countries and from authors who have little or no funding, but that those authors who have access to funds for publication are able to donate them to us.

All authors still retain the copyright of their articles so are free to distribute them wherever they wish after publication (as long as the original publication in ecancermedicalscience is cited). Authors of commissioned reviews and Special issue articles will be exempt, and we will continue to provide free publication and translation to authors of articles submitted in Spanish or Portuguese, as we have received specific funding for this.