PeerJ uses a
for profit PeerJ also offered a
preprint service named
PeerJ Preprints (launched on April 3, 2013 and discontinued in September 2019). The low costs were said to be in part achieved by using
cloud infrastructure: both
PeerJ and
PeerJ Preprints run on
Amazon EC2, with the content stored on
Amazon S3. Originally,
PeerJ charged a one-time membership fee to authors that allowed them—with some additional requirements, such as commenting upon, or reviewing, at least one paper per year—to publish in the journal for life. Since October 2016,
PeerJ has reverted to
article processing charges, but still offers the lifetime membership subscription as an alternative option. The current charge for non-members publishing a single article in
PeerJ is $1,195.00, regardless of the number of authors. Alternatively, the life-time membership permitting one free paper per year for life is $599 per author (basic membership), two per year for $699 (enhanced membership), or five per year for $799 (premium membership). It may sometimes be cheaper to pay the per publication charge than paying membership fees for all authors. In May 2023,
PeerJ introduced Annual Institutional Memberships as an alternative to article processing charges. In 2024, PeerJ was acquired by traditional research publisher Taylor & Francis. The announcement suggests that Taylor & Francis will invest in PeerJ to support it to develop and innovate at greater scale. == Reception ==