Should I pay this APC?
Enter a journal name or ISSN. This tool reports its open-access status and any recorded article-processing charge from the open OpenAlex and DOAJ data — and, crucially, helps you read whether a fee is a normal cost of open access or a warning sign. A fee is not the problem; a fee without transparency is.
Check a journal's fee status
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How to read this. A published, transparent APC on a genuinely indexed, DOAJ-listed journal is a normal part of open-access publishing — not a scam. The real warning signs are a fee that appears only after acceptance, a fee quoted informally by email, or a charge on a journal with no genuine indexing or peer review. Fee data from OpenAlex and DOAJ can be incomplete or out of date, so always confirm the current charge on the journal's own site, and read our guide to identifying a predatory or cloned journal.