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

Fri Feb 28 16:06:52 GMT 2014

Bo-Christer,

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on the issue of costs due to higher rejection rates, or rather the "non-existent" costs of the process around peer review (which are everything but). It depends on the journal. In some cases, all that work is done outside the purview of the publisher, and the latter is just someone who maintains a delivery platform (and possibly procures mark-up and copy-editing, and for traditional journals, takes care of the typesetting, printing and distribution). In many cases I have been involved in, though, and am aware of, the process of peer review is quite a lot of work for the publisher, even while the peer review itself is not. It is often difficult to identify appropriate reviewers and it often takes many invitations to appropriate potential reviewers before enough can be found who accept the invitation. Then there is follow-up (you might think reviewers deliver their reports in good time, but reality is all too often different, I'm afraid). And then there is the moderation of reviews for communication back to the authors (you might think reviewers are always clear yet civil, but reality is all too often different, I'm afraid), and then in a considerable number of cases the cycle repeats, sometimes several times, before an acceptance or rejection decision.

Even when the whole process takes place under the supervision of a journal's academic editor, outside of the purview of the publisher, that editor and his or her support staff is usually offered financial support, the amount of which is likely more a reflection of the number of submissions dealt with than of the number of articles accepted. The latter would introduce perverse incentives to accept, anyway. You could argue that that incentive is already there (though in general thankfully resisted), and you would be right, because publisher income is dependent on published material. This is as true for APC-funded OA publishers as of subscription-funded traditional ones, the subscription fees typically rising with the amount published.

In many ways, it would be better if publishers stayed out of the peer review process altogether, as I have argued here: http://theparachute.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/essence-of-academic-publishing.html

Best,

Jan Velterop

On 28 Feb 2014, at 14:35, Bo-Christer Björk <bo-christer.bjork at hanken.fi> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> An interesting discussion. My perspective is not a moral one. The APC charged should as far as possible reflect the quality and services of the journal. The current full OA market (for APC journals) is a relatively competive microeconomic market where customers(=authors) decide where to submit in a situation where they usually have several journals (some OA, most not ) to choose from. Quite in contrast to the oligopolistic subscription market or the strange hybrid OA market. So if BMC have in fact managed to establish their better journals as high quality outlets there is no problem in rising prices. The authors dedice. I don't think the UK funders decisions have yet had much impact on the funding. 
> 
> I've personally paid APCs (or my department) for two articles in PLoS and two in BMC journals nd I've found the benefit/cost ratio to be excellent in all cases. In contrast I've made several grave mistakes in the choice of where to submit to in subscription journals. Those journals don't charge but there are high opportunity costs in delayed publication, low visibility etc.
> 
> As to the question of rising costs due to higher rejection rates I find this to be a largely unsubstantiated claim. The IT infra is already paid for, copy editing and invoicing costs only depend on the published papers. Almost all of the costs of desk rejected manuscripts and manuscripts rejected after long review processes are born by unpaid academic editors and reviewers, that is the global scholarly community. 
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Bo-Christer
> 
> On 2/28/14 3:50 PM, Heather Morrison wrote:
>> 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> 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 … J
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 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
>>> 
>>> 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] 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
>>> 
>>>  
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>>> GOAL mailing list
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>>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>> 
>> 
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