Dear RSAI members,

it is with great pleasure that we deliver good news. As of Jan. 1, 2024 both RSAI journals (Papers in Regional Science and Regional Science Policy & Practice) will be published by Elsevier.

The last decade was marked by continuous growth in quality and volume for both journals. For this, the RSAI is grateful to the current publisher, Wiley, which thoroughly supported our journal editors in the strive for offering better journals to our members.

As we all see from our everyday experience, the publication landscape is changing rapidly, and is in particular showing a fast growth of open access journals. These are meant to increase the access to science to as many researchers as possible, also including those hailing from low-income countries. To meet the needs of the market, the RSAI Council decided to partner with one of the top scientific publishers, Elsevier, to enhance the transition to gold open access for both journals. Therefore, effective Jan. 1, 2024, all articles published by our two journals will be published in the new mode.

As we realize that the transition is uneven, and may have distributional effects for a number of professional categories the RSAI Council has agreed a substantial number of waivers for Article Publishing Charges (APCs) and is now developing guidelines for their distribution. These are in addition to waivers and discounts already granted through initiatives supported by the Publisher such as Research4Life.

We are most happy to let the community know of this further step in the process of growth of our journals, and we can already guarantee that our Editors will keep working hard for selecting sound and impactful research to our community.

Please do follow our journals, web site, and newsletter for being kept abreast of the further developments,

Kind regards,