[GOAL] OA APC study 2015: the mythical OA APC, preliminary central tendencies, and variations.

[Heather Morrison]

In the spirit of open research, some preliminary analysis from our 2015 OA APC study that may be of interest:

The mythical OA article processing charge
http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/12/03/the-mythical-oa-article-processing-charge/

This is a brief explanation / opinion piece of why it is a myth to think that there is a single flat per-article processing charge, and why it may be more helpful to embrace the existing diversity than to pin down "the number" - a single cost for producing an article. Even fully OA journals that rely on OA APCs offer many variations in pricing, based not only on presumed ability to pay, but also on the work involved and in apparent effort to support community (for societies and associations) and/or customer loyalty. These are healthy experiments and much would be lost in a search for the simplicity of the single number.

Guinsly Mondésir presents the variations found in the 2015 study in both english http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/12/03/variations-in-pricing-of-the-article-processing-charges/ and french http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/12/03/variation-dans-les-frais-de-publications-de-larticle/

Jihane Salhab & I present preliminary quantitative findings of the range and central tendencies of the mythical variable that is the OA APC (and APPC - some OA journals charge per-page not per-article) here:
http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/12/03/oa-apc-preliminary-data-2015-range-central-tendencies-and-preliminary-longitudinal-analysis/

In brief, the range was from $0 to $4,500. The overall average APC found in 2015 of $998 is a modest increase from $964 in 2014 and $906 found in 2010 (by Solomon & Björk<http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/apc2/>). There are many ways of calculating an average, and our calculations result in average cost-to-publish ranging from an estimated $250 USD (based on average per-page and average max. pages) to $2,154 (mode without Hindawi journals).

The average may mask contradictory tendencies. For example, many newer OA journals have charges of $0 or low prices, so that growth in new journals may obscure higher price increases for established journals. We also note that patterns may vary by publisher. Hindawi, as the largest OA publisher, has such an impact on the average that we are now referring to this as the "Hindawi factor". For example, the 2015 mode of $800 contrasts with a mode of $2,154 when the Hindawi journals are excluded.

>From 2014 to 2015 on a per-title basis there is a fairly even 3-way split between journals that have retained the same price, increased or decreased their APC.

Some good news on longevity of these journals: the attrition rate is very low, only 2% overall, with almost all of the titles not found coming from the 2010 sample (not surprisingly).
http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/11/26/current-status-of-oa-apc-journals-sampled-2010-2014/

Full data and documentation is available in the OA APC dataverse:
http://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/dvn/dv/oaapc

All of the posts are open for commenting.

--
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
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons: Open Access Scholarship
http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>


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