Author Fees

Article Submission Fee Policy

Health Sciences Quarterly (Health Sci. Q.) applies a transparent article submission fee policy to support the editorial, technical, ethical, and administrative processes required for scholarly publishing. The journal does not charge any Article Processing Charge (APC), acceptance fee, publication fee, page fee, colour fee, production fee, archiving fee, or post-acceptance fee. Only a one-time article submission fee is requested after preliminary editorial suitability assessment.

1. General Principles

• No fee is requested at the initial submission stage.
• A one-time article submission fee is requested only after the manuscript has passed preliminary editorial suitability assessment.
• The submission fee is not a publication fee and does not guarantee acceptance, external peer review, expedited review, or publication.
• Editorial and peer-review decisions are made independently and are based solely on academic merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, reviewer reports, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.
• Apart from the article submission fee, the journal does not charge any APC, acceptance fee, publication fee, page fee, colour fee, production fee, archiving fee, or post-acceptance fee.

2. Submission Fee Amount

The article submission fee is 150 USD or the equivalent amount in local currency, where applicable.

This fee contributes to the following editorial and administrative processes:

• Preliminary editorial and technical assessment,
• Verification of required submission files and author declarations,
• Similarity screening using iThenticate,
• Editorial correspondence and manuscript management,
• Peer-review coordination,
• DOI and metadata preparation,
• Maintenance and administrative operation of the online editorial system.

3. Timing of Payment

• Authors submit their manuscripts through the online submission system without making any payment at the initial submission stage.
• The article submission fee is requested only after the manuscript has passed preliminary editorial suitability assessment.
• Authors receive payment instructions by e-mail after the preliminary editorial assessment has been completed.
• Payment must be completed before the manuscript proceeds to the next editorial or peer-review stage.
• Manuscripts that are rejected at the initial desk-screening stage due to being out of scope, incomplete, improperly anonymised, ethically non-compliant, or clearly unsuitable for the journal are not normally processed for payment.

4. Scope of the Fee

The article submission fee supports the editorial and administrative handling of manuscripts that have passed preliminary suitability assessment. It contributes to technical checks, similarity screening, editorial correspondence, manuscript tracking, metadata preparation, and the coordination of the editorial workflow.

The fee is not charged in exchange for acceptance, favourable peer review, expedited processing, publication, or post-acceptance production. Payment of the fee does not create any obligation for the journal to accept, publish, or send the manuscript to external peer review.

5. Editorial Independence

Payment of the article submission fee does not influence editorial decisions, reviewer selection, peer-review outcomes, revision decisions, acceptance decisions, or publication scheduling. All editorial and peer-review processes are conducted independently of the payment process.

All manuscripts are evaluated in accordance with the journal’s editorial policies, peer-review standards, publication ethics principles, and the COPE Core Practices.

6. Refund Policy

• The article submission fee is generally non-refundable once payment has been completed and editorial processing has begun.
• The fee is not refunded if the manuscript is later rejected, withdrawn by the authors, not revised within the required period, or declined after peer review.
• Refund requests may be considered only in cases of duplicate payment, technical payment error, incorrect payment, or other administrative error confirmed by the journal or publisher.
• No refund is provided on the basis of editorial outcome, reviewer recommendation, rejection decision, or author disagreement with the editorial decision.

7. No Additional Charges after Acceptance

After acceptance, Health Sciences Quarterly does not charge any additional fee for article processing, publication, page layout, colour figures, DOI assignment, online publication, archiving, or post-acceptance production. The article submission fee is the only fee requested from authors in relation to manuscript processing.

8. Invoicing and Payment Information

After preliminary editorial suitability assessment, authors are contacted by e-mail with detailed payment instructions. Payments may be made by bank transfer or other approved methods stated in the payment instructions or invoice. Invoices are issued under Holistence Publications in accordance with applicable financial and administrative procedures.

Authors should not make any payment before receiving official payment instructions from the journal or publisher.

9. Transparency Statement

The journal publicly discloses its fee policy to ensure transparency for authors, reviewers, readers, indexing services, and research institutions. Authors are encouraged to read this fee policy together with the journal’s publication ethics, peer-review process, open access, copyright and licensing, and author guidelines pages.