Is this journal worth its APC?

Price is the fourth question, not the first. But when two journals tie on the first three, price decides, and the gap can be zero against three thousand dollars. The order matters, so this is the order.

1. Would the editor send it out for review?

Read the aims and scope. Then read the last two issues and ask whether your paper would look at home among them. A journal outside your scope costs you the months it takes to be desk-rejected, which is more than any fee.

2. Who will read it?

Not the impact factor. The people. Which journal do the researchers you want to reach actually open? Where do the papers you cite most often appear? A paper in the journal your field reads is worth more than the same paper in a journal with a higher number that your field ignores.

3. Does your funder allow it?

If your grant requires open access with a specific licence and no embargo, a journal that cannot provide that is not an option, whatever it costs. Check the funder policy, then the journal's licence and embargo terms. The Journal Checker Tool from cOAlition S answers this for Plan S funders. The journal pages here show licence and open access type.

4. What would you pay?

Now the fee. Not the list price: the effective price after your country's waiver status and your institution's agreements. For a corresponding author in a Research4Life Group A country, a journal listing three thousand dollars may cost nothing. For a corresponding author at an institution with a read-and-publish deal, a different journal may cost nothing instead. The comparison pages on this site put two journals side by side and work this out for each situation.

5. What is the free route, and is it worse?

In a hybrid journal you can decline open access, publish behind the paywall, and deposit the accepted manuscript. In most fields a diamond journal with equivalent indexing exists. Ask whether either route costs you anything that matters: readers, compliance, time. Often the answer is no.

6. How long will it take?

If the journal publishes a median time to first decision, it is on the journal page here. If it does not publish one, that is information too.

Reasons to walk away

Discontinued from Scopus, whatever the reason category. Guaranteed acceptance or guaranteed timelines. An invoice before peer review. More special issues than regular issues. A fee to publish faster. Any one of these ends the evaluation.

Then

If two journals survive all six questions, open the comparison page for the pair. If the one you want charges and you think it should not, ask before you pay. The people who pay full price are almost never the people who had no alternative. They are the people who did not ask.