Advances.in

What Advances.in does

Advances.in LTD is a London-based, privately-held academic publishing startup that operates a portfolio of gold open-access journals under a model that compensates peer reviewers and editors — a structural departure from traditional academic publishing, which relies on unpaid academic labor. The company's flagship product is advances.in/psychology (ISSN 2976-937X), a peer-reviewed psychology journal that holds a Q1 SJR quartile ranking (2025), a Scopus CiteScore of 4.4, and indexing across Scopus, OpenAlex, Google Scholar, and Crossref. Authors submit manuscripts through the advances.pub submission portal (integrated with ORCID for author identification and Google reCAPTCHA for spam prevention), pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) of $1,950 for research articles/reviews/reports/dataset reports or $450 for commentaries at acceptance, and retain copyright under a CC-BY 4.0 license with immediate open access and no embargo. The company offers an APA7 Reference Verification Tool (apa.advances.in) as a free top-of-funnel utility, a customer support knowledge base (support.advances.in), and a Journal Launch Partnership program that allows external editors to launch additional open-access journals under the advances.in umbrella with administrative support.

The underlying technology stack is standard web-publishing infrastructure: Cloudflare for CDN and security (including Turnstile bot detection), Stripe and Revolut for payment processing, Xero for accounting, DocuSign for consultation contracts, and partnerships with the British Library and Internet Archive for long-term preservation. The go-to-market motion is product-led growth targeting academic researchers globally, supported by earned media coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Higher Education, Research Professional News, and Inside Higher Ed, alongside organic social presence on LinkedIn and Bluesky and thematic special issues on topics such as misinformation, violent extremism, acculturation, and network psychometrics. The business model is a transactional APC structure with waivers for authors from World Bank low/lower-middle-income economies, and editorial metrics include an average 10.9 days to first decision, 4.8 months from submission to acceptance, and 8.8 days from acceptance to publication. Advances.in LTD is registered in England and Wales (company number 14114105), is UK GDPR-compliant with the ICO, and has no disclosed parent company, funding rounds, or executive leadership beyond Karolina Sowa as Data Protection Officer.

Name

Advances.in

Legal name

Advances.in LTD

Website

https://advances.in

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Advances.in is a London-based academic publishing startup that operates gold open-access journals — primarily advances.in/psychology — under a model that pays peer reviewers and editors, monetizing via $1,950 Article Processing Charges from authors at acceptance.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Academic Publishing

NAICS

Periodical Publishers (51312)

SIC

Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721)

akta.pro primary industry

Academic & Scholarly Journals Publishing (Peer-Reviewed) (MPAJABAC)

akta.pro secondary industries

Open Access Scholarly Journals & Monographs (EDAGAFAJ), Conference Proceedings & Research Reports Publishing (EDAGAFAL)

Keywords

• Open access publishing
• Academic journals
• Peer review
• Scholarly publishing
• Journal hosting

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Article Processing Charges (APC): Authors pay an APC upon acceptance of their manuscript. Research articles, reviews, research reports, and dataset reports are billed at $1,950. Commentaries are billed at $450. The APC covers open access publication, compensation for editors and reviewers, typesetting, hosting, indexing, and long-term archiving.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Advances.in publishes gold open-access peer-reviewed academic journals, led by advances.in/psychology (ISSN 2976-937X), and provides a manuscript submission and peer-review platform (advances.pub). Authors pay Article Processing Charges ($1,950 for research articles, $450 for commentaries) to publish under CC-BY 4.0 licensing, with the company handling peer review management, typesetting, DOI assignment, and long-term archiving. It also runs a Journal Launch Partnership program allowing partners to launch new open-access journals under the Advances.in brand.

Product overview

Advances.in is an academic publishing startup operating a platform of open-access journals with a sustainable publishing model that compensates editors and reviewers. The core product is advances.in/psychology (ISSN 2976-937X), a gold open-access psychology journal. Authors submit manuscripts through the advances.pub submission portal, use the apa.advances.in reference verification tool before submission, and access support via the support.advances.in knowledge base. The company also offers a journal launch partnership program for starting new open-access journals under the advances.in brand. The business model relies on Article Processing Charges (APCs) from authors, with waivers available for researchers from low-income countries or those with funding constraints.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• advances.in/psychology: The company's primary peer-reviewed psychology journal (ISSN 2976-937X), a gold open-access publication that compensates editors and reviewers.

Products and services

• advances.in/psychology Gold open-access peer-reviewed academic journal in psychology (ISSN 2976-937X); authors pay Article Processing Charges ($1,950 for research articles, $450 for commentaries) to publish under CC-BY 4.0, with the journal handling peer review, typesetting, DOI assignment, and long-term archiving. Indexed in Scopus, OpenAlex, and Google Scholar. Target audience is academic researchers, graduate students, and faculty in psychology and related disciplines.
• Journal Launch Partnership Program Partnership program allowing scholarly societies, research groups, or editors to launch new open-access peer-reviewed journals hosted on the Advances.in publishing platform, leveraging the company's submission, peer-review, and indexing infrastructure. Target audience is academic editors, scholarly societies, and research organizations seeking to start a new journal.

Quantifiable outcome

• 10.9 days average to first decision
• +2 more outcomes

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration13 records

Feature2 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered minor.

• British LibraryminorOthersLong-term archiving partner for published articles ensuring permanent preservation of academic content.
• Internet ArchiveminorOthersLong-term digital archiving partner for preserving published articles for future access.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Wiley: Wiley operates a large portfolio of peer-reviewed journals including psychology titles and an OA division (Wiley Open Access), representing a broad incumbent against which Advances.in's psychology journal must position.
• Elsevier: Elsevier is the largest academic publisher globally with thousands of subscription and hybrid OA journals including psychology titles; it represents the dominant incumbent Advances.in competes against for prestige submissions.
• Springer Nature: Springer Nature publishes Nature, BMC, and Springer journals across psychology and adjacent fields, offering established OA and hybrid models that compete directly for high-quality OA submissions.

Direct peers

• MDPI: MDPI is the world's largest fully open-access academic publisher, operating a portfolio of peer-reviewed journals funded by APCs — directly comparable to Advances.in's author-pays open access model and journal-launch scaling approach.
• Frontiers: Frontiers operates a large portfolio of gold open-access peer-reviewed journals across disciplines with an APC-funded model and innovative peer-review workflows, making it a direct competitor for authors seeking fast, fair OA publishing.
• PLOS: PLOS pioneered gold open-access peer-reviewed journals funded by APCs and is a foundational reference point for any new OA journal publisher attempting to scale ethically and sustainably.
• eLife: eLife is an OA journal with experimental peer-review models and a mission-driven approach to reforming academic publishing, directly comparable in spirit and structure to Advances.in's paid-reviewer innovation.
• PeerJ: PeerJ publishes peer-reviewed open-access journals in the life sciences and related fields using an APC model with lifetime publishing memberships, comparable to Advances.in's APC-funded psychology journal.
• F1000Research: F1000Research operates an open-research publishing platform with transparent peer review and APC funding, making it a direct peer in OA peer-reviewed scholarly publishing.

Emerging players

• Cogent OA (Taylor & Francis): Cogent OA is Taylor & Francis's open-access mega-journal covering multiple disciplines, comparable as an APC-funded OA venue for psychology and adjacent research.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/advances-in

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Advances.in