The editorial occasionally come across a situation when an author withdraws a manuscript upon receiving a payment request. The editorial considers this irresponsible, when much of the publication process has been completed by editors and reviewers. The editorial request authors to provide payment details after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. The fees policy is published on our website and we require that the author confirms that they have has read the journal policies prior submitting the manuscript.
COPE advice
Journals need to be unambiguously transparent about article fees. Some authors may be unfamiliar with open access, particularly in specialties where it does not have a strong market share yet. The journal could be more up front about its charges and its business model – for example, on the home page, on the about page, at the top and in bold of the author instructions page.
If the reason authors give is that they changed their mind, authors have the right to withdraw their papers for whatever reason. If the reason given is to do with multiple submission or trying to submit to a journal with an impact factor, or higher impact factor, after improving their paper from peer review, then that would be unethical. This could be a reason if the same author/s are repeatedly submitting papers and withdrawing at payment stage, with a supposed reason of not knowing or not being able to pay. In that case, the institution could be informed.