The Conceptual ‘APC Ring’: Is There a Risk of APC-Driven Guest Authorship, and Is a Change in the Culture of the APC Needed?

While guest or honourary authorship in academic papers is a broadly and widely discussed phenomenon in biomedical research, the issue of the use—or abuse—of article-processing charges (APCs) as a form of potential authorship exchange currency, that is, the ‘APC ring,’ is neither being considered nor discussed. The APC is central to the open-access (OA) movement, specifically the gold OA model. It is conceivable that, in a hyper-competitive academic publishing environment where the number of gold OA journals is growing, a segment of poorly funded researchers aiming to publish in ranked OA journals with out-of-reach APCs might turn to richer or well-funded researchers to cover the APC bill in exchange for authorship. Despite this, no published cases directly documenting APC-for-authorship schemes as a form of guest authorship appear to exist, which seems inconceivable. One possible explanation is that if such unethical behaviour were to be detected by APC-charging OA journals, it might not be reported as such. In this situation, APC-dependent OA journals would be conflicted between receiving a financial lifeline, the APC, and exposing authors that have abused the APC in their journals in exchange for authorship. How would publishers dependent on the APC-based OA model justify receiving APCs derived from an APC ring? Although this form of guest authorship is currently hypothetical, it seems highly likely, so this issue needs greater debate, and if actual case studies exist, these need to be openly and publicly debated to better appreciate how this phenomenon is taking place.