Publication Fee
Purpose
Al-Qamar is an open-access journal. Readers, researchers, students, teachers, libraries, and institutions are not charged for access to published content.
To support editorial management, website maintenance, manuscript production, copyediting, formatting, metadata preparation, DOI-related work where applicable, archiving, and publication services, the journal charges a publication fee only after acceptance.
Publication Fee
The publication fee for accepted manuscripts is:
- PKR 20,000 for Pakistani authors
- USD 100 for international authors
There is no submission fee unless separately announced by the editorial office.
When the Fee Is Charged
The publication fee is charged only after a manuscript has been accepted for publication.
Authors are not required to pay a publication fee at the time of submission or during peer review, unless a specific administrative requirement is separately announced by the journal.
Fee and Editorial Independence
The publication fee does not influence:
- Initial editorial screening
- Reviewer selection
- Peer-review reports
- Editorial decisions
- Revision requirements
- Acceptance or rejection
- Publication priority
Editorial decisions are based on academic merit, originality, relevance to the journal’s aims and scope, methodological quality, ethical compliance, reviewer reports, and editorial assessment.
Acceptance is never based on payment, personal connection, institutional pressure, or any non-academic consideration.
Author Category
For fee purposes, the author category is normally determined by the corresponding author’s primary institutional affiliation, unless otherwise decided by the editorial office.
Where a manuscript has multiple authors from different countries, the editorial office may determine the applicable fee category based on the corresponding author, institutional affiliation, funding context, or other relevant publication circumstances.
What the Fee Supports
The publication fee helps support the journal’s publication process, including:
- Editorial administration
- OJS website maintenance
- Manuscript processing
- Copyediting
- Formatting and layout
- Proof preparation
- Metadata preparation
- DOI and article record preparation where applicable
- Archiving and preservation support
- Online publication and access
- Technical and production support
The fee supports publication services and does not purchase acceptance.
Fee Waivers and Reductions
Fee waivers or reductions may be considered on request where justified.
Requests may be considered in cases such as:
- Lack of institutional funding
- Unfunded research
- Early-career researchers
- Postgraduate scholars
- Authors from financially constrained backgrounds
- Other reasonable academic or financial circumstances
A fee waiver or reduction request should normally be made after acceptance or when requested by the editorial office. Approval of a waiver or reduction is not automatic and remains subject to editorial or administrative decision.
No Reader Charges
Al-Qamar does not charge readers or libraries for access to published articles. Published content remains available online under the journal’s open-access policy.
License and Access
All articles published in Al-Qamar are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), unless otherwise stated.
This license permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are properly credited.
Transparency Statement
Al-Qamar is committed to transparent publication fee information. Any change in the publication fee should be clearly updated on this page and reflected consistently in Author Guidelines, Submission Guidelines, and other relevant journal pages.
Old or conflicting fee statements should not remain publicly available on the journal website.
Final Statement
The publication fee is intended to support the costs of open-access publishing and journal production. It is charged only after acceptance and does not influence the editorial or peer-review process.
