Calculation of the Cost of Publication of an Article in Selected Journals of Yazd University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran, Using Activity-Based Costing Method

Research journals are costly and government-dependent services. Therefore, this study is carried out with the aim to determine the cost of publishing an article in selected journals of Yazd University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran, through the activity-based costing (ABC) techniques.

In this descriptive study, in order to calculate the cost of publishing an article in three scientific journals of Yazd University of Medical Sciences, initially, the process of publishing an article was identified and then the primary activities were uncovered. Moreover, the secondary activities were identified through reviewing manuscripts, observation, and interviewing the process owners. The cost centers related to the primary and secondary activities were identified and the cost data related to these cost centers were uncovered from the financial documents; this way, the cost of article publication was calculated.

The cost for the Journal of Food Quality and Hazards Control, Journal of Toloo-e-Behdasht, and Journal of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences was calculated to be as 17131509 Rials, 8337468 Rials, and 5343960 Rials, respectively. The editing and layout and initial review steps were the costliest among the steps for publishing an article. Furthermore, the highest percentage of total cost of the primary and secondary activities was related to the cost of human resources.

Initial review, editing, and layout steps are costly in the initial activities of the journals. Given that the human resource costs are the major cost of publishing an article, improving human resource (HR) performance can be effective in reducing costs.