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

Mon Mar 3 11:07:48 GMT 2014

There are a number of factors involved in setting prices for BioMed Central's journals. Inflation is one of these, albeit not a major one, but where this does play a role it is important to note that UK inflation was at 4.5% in 2011, rather more than Canada's 1.5%. However, there are a number of other issues that play a part in APC pricing.

As an open access publisher, BioMed Central charges based on the services it provides. Different journals receive different service levels, and these often change as journals develop.  Globalization and Health, the "dramatic" case singled out by Heather, is indeed a good example to show why at certain points the APC of a journal may increase by a higher amount than inflation. These increases reflect the additional costs resulting from provision of additional services. Globalization and Health received its first Impact Factor in 2011 and has seen increases in submissions and publications ever since. Early in its life, in order to keep the APC as low as possible, the Editors-in-Chief elected to run the editorial office themselves. As the journal has grown, they have more recently chosen to take up the use of BioMed Central's editorial office services, and the APC was increased in order to pay for this.

A typical APC for BMC journals with publisher-provided editorial office (such as Globalization and Health, as well as of the journals in the BMC series) is GBP1325. In January 2014, this APC increased by the inflationary amount of GBP35.

Another factor which needs to be taken into account is the coverage of some or part of the APC by societies owning or affiliated with journals. In the initial years of a journal being published by BioMed Central, societies will often elect to support their journals financially by covering APCs of all articles, and then gradually reducing their support and costs as the journals become more successful. As a result, it can appear as though the APC has increased substantially, when in fact it is only the source of APC coverage that has changed.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Stefan Busch, PhD
Springer
Publisher, BioMed Central
---
Tiergartenstr. 17 | 69121 Heidelberg | Germany
tel  +49 (0)6221 487-8161

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Bo-Christer Björk
Sent: 28 February 2014 15:36
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: The dramatic growth of BioMedCentral's open access article processing charges

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<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 ... 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<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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