Pay What You Want

Dear Readers and Authors

Planta Medica Letters will be celebrating its second birthday in 2016, and we are very happy and excited about the attention and high quality manuscripts the journal is receiving. We have had submissions from right around the globe: Argentina, Australia, India, Japan, Korea, USA, as well as from almost every European country, to name but a few. This wide spread makes us particularly proud in that it reflects the international recognition our new journal is enjoying in the scientific community.

Maybe some of those submissions were aided by the fact that we did not levy any article publication charge (APC) at first; and indeed now would be the time to introduce appropriate APCs for Planta Medica Letters. Before doing so, however, we would like to undertake an experiment and participate in an innovative study of the University of Munichʼs Economics Department: Pay What You Want. For one year, we will be leaving it up to the authors to decide how much they would like to pay for the publication of their accepted articles.

How it all works? Just the way it sounds, very simply. Whilst there is a recommended APC – EUR 800 – the authors get to decide how much it is they really want to pay: there is no minimum amount; we will accept any amount that authors are willing to pay for the publication of their accepted manuscripts.

We are very much looking forward to the way this new and experimental way of charging APCs will be received by our authors and the research community and we of course hope that it will encourage our authors – you! – to keep submitting your short research papers to Planta Medica Letters!

Luc Pieters
Editor-in-Chief

Regina Wenzel
Publishing Editor