Open Access Publishing

Open Access means that anyone can read, download and share published material for free, without paying a subscription charge. Articles published in our journals are freely available after publication because all content is distributed under a Creative Commons open access license.

We finance publication through article processing charges (APC), paid by authors and/or their institutions. APCs cover the cost of managing the peer review process, professional copy-editing, and promotion of published research.

For authors, open access means a potentially wider circle of readers for their research papers, with some research suggesting that open access papers are more highly cited.

At Betasciencepress Publishing (BSP), we believe that open-access offers value for money for researchers—our income per article is substantially lower than established subscription publishers or even other open-access publishers

Editorial Process, Peer-Review, and Production

Articles submitted to BSP journals are subject to rigorous peer-review. We operate double-blind peer-review (the reviewers do not know the authors’ identities until the paper has been published). The Manuscript online submission system, ManuscriptManager, incorporates online tools for manuscript submission, peer-reviewing and editorial decision making. Authors, reviewers, and editors will need to have an account with the ManuscriptManager submission system in order to finish the tasks assigned to them.

The Instructions for Authors on the website of each journal will guide authors on how to prepare and submit their manuscripts.

Once a manuscript is submitted, the submission is received by the Managing Editor who will subsequently coordinate the whole editorial process for the manuscript: peer-review, decision-making, possible authors’ revision, manuscript acceptance, copyediting, English editing, proofreading, and least but not last final publication. An Associate Editor will be assigned to the submitted article and will send review invitations.

At least two reports per manuscript are collected for each manuscript—three if the first two differ substantially. Reviewers must in general hold a Ph.D. degree and have recent publications in the field of the submitted manuscript.

The Editor-in-Chief will make the final acceptance or rejection decision for a manuscript, usually after author revision. We typically allow no more than two rounds of major revisions.

After acceptance of an article for publication, the organization of the production of the paper, which entails copyediting, English editing and final production in preparation for publication on the journal website will start.

Editor-in-Chief Responsibilities

The Editor-in-Chief is the head of the journal and is mainly responsible for the scientific quality of the journal. The Editor-in-Chief is also responsible for assisting the Editorial Office in the management of the journal, which entails:

  • scientific decisions about the journal’s scope,
  • inviting distinguished scientists to join the editorial board,
  • suggesting topics for special issues,
  • assisting the Guest Editors in the setup of special issues,
  • overviewing the editorial process for individual manuscripts (mainly by taking the final decision whether a paper can be published after peer-review and revisions).

The Editor-in-Chief position is honorary. As a reward for the efforts, the Editor-in-Chief can publish one or two papers per year free of charge in any of the open access journals. The initial term for the Editor-in-Chief position is two years and can be renewed.

Editorial Board Member Responsibilities

An Editorial Board member will be asked to review one or two manuscripts per year and may help to edit a special issue on a topic related to his or her research interests. Editorial Board members are also encouraged to help to promote the journal among their peers or at conferences. The communication with Editorial Board members is done primarily by E-mail. The initial term for an Editorial Board membership is two years and can be renewed. An Editorial Board member may also step down from the position at any time.

Guest Editor Responsibility / Guest Editing a Special Issue

We appreciate collaborations with scholars all over the world. Special issues are normally edited by a Guest Editor who invites colleagues from the same research field to contribute an article on a topic within their expertise. The Guest Editor works together with the Editorial Office to prepare a description and keywords for the special issue webpage. We aim for at least ten articles published per special issue. Often, the Guest Editor will also write an editorial paper for the special issue. The Guest Editor usually makes recommendations on the acceptance of manuscripts submitted to his or her special issue (depending on the journal’s policy—in some cases they may make a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief). Papers belonging to a special issue are published online in the journal immediately after acceptance and collected together on the special issue webpage. This means that there is no delay for authors who submit their work: it will appear shortly after acceptance, even if other papers in the special issue are still being processed.

Guest Editors should not hold conflicts of interest with authors whose work they are assessing, e.g. if they are from the same institution or collaborate closely. In this case, the Editor-in-Chief or a suitable editorial board member will make final acceptance decisions for submitted papers.

Launching New Open Access Journals

Publishing proposals, the launch of new titles must be confidentially addressed with the headquarter office by mailing a new journal proposal to info@betasciencepress.com 

Comments and Questions

Please direct your general questions by E-mail to info@betasciencepress.com.