[GOAL] Re: The dramatic growth of BioMedCentral's open access article processing charges

[Heather Morrison]

hi Jan,

Good question! No, I have not looked into whether BMC's rejection rates have increased.

Whether this would be an acceptable reason for increasing prices at all, or at a particular rate, is a different question.

For example, unlike a print-based journal with size constraints imposed by the need to bundle articles into mailable issues, an online open access journal can easily increase in scale with more submissions. PLOS ONE has demonstrated the potential for translating rapid growth in submissions to rapid journal growth, with no price increase, technological innovations, and a more than healthy surplus.

Best,

Heather Morrison


On Feb 28, 2014, at 7:08 AM, "Frantsvåg Jan Erik" <jan.e.frantsvag at uit.no<mailto:jan.e.frantsvag at uit.no>> wrote:

Interesting numbers!

Have you investigated if some of this increase could be explained by an increased rejection rate? – this would be an acceptable explanation, in my opinion.

The suspicion is, of course, that this could be one result of e.g. the RCUK OA policy, which creates a less competitive market and better conditions for generating super-profits.

I think it was Guédon who asked why currency fluctuations always led to price increases … :)

Best,
Jan Erik

Jan Erik Frantsvåg
Open Access adviser
The University Library of Tromsø
phone +47 77 64 49 50
e-mail jan.e.frantsvag at uit.no<mailto:jan.e.frantsvag at uit.no>
http://en.uit.no/ansatte/organisasjon/ansatte/person?p_document_id=43618&p_dimension_id=88187
Publications: http://tinyurl.com/6rycjns




Fra: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] På vegne av Heather Morrison
Sendt: 28. februar 2014 00:54
Til: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Emne: [GOAL] The dramatic growth of BioMedCentral's open access article processing charges

Thanks to the University of Ottawa's open sharing of their author fund data, I've been able to calculate that over the past few years there is evidence that BMC is raising prices at rates far beyond inflation (and far beyond what could be accounted for through currency fluctuations).

Details are posted here:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-dramatic-growth-of-biomedcentral.html

Note that this data reflects BMC practices and cannot be generalized to open access publishing as a whole. Public Library of Science, for example, has achieved a 23% surplus in the same time frame without increasing their OA article processing charges at all.

best,

--
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa
Desmarais 111-02
613-562-5800 ext. 7634
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>

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