In reply to Anna Sharman.

Â Interesting idea.Â  Certainly higher rejection rates raises operating costs, while potentially increasing the "added value" of the journal.Â  This increased value could justify higher author fees, whether at submission time or publication time.Â Â

I don't think it actually matters much *when* that fee is applied -- that's just a question of whether the risk of not being published is passed to the author or the journal, and would be expected to come out in the price.Â  (If the journal adds the extra fee at submission time, the author assumes the risk of it not being published, and therefore be willing to pay less than if the fee is applied as part of the publication cost).Â  Therefore, I think it's actually irrelevant when the fee is applied.Â

Either way, the market will force the fees to reflect the added value of the journal (including the risk if that fee is paid upon submission, the added value of selectivity, the name recognition, the peer review, the editorial board, etc).Â

Perhaps it is more interesting to ask where the equilibrium will fall between higher rejection rates and higher added value.Â  Now that we can measure added value in terms of real dollars (author's willingness to pay the publication fee) instead of impact factor, etc, we could start to learn the dollar value of selectivity -- how much more are authors willing to pay to publish in a journal with high selectivity vs one that is less selective?