[GOAL] MDPI APCs 2011 - 2016

[Heather Morrison]

Thank you, Dietrich Rordorf.

To clarify, this is a limitation of the study, not an assumption. That is, I only note the price per journal, but do not assume that this is the only relevant variable to understanding the impact of the APC.

The APC study in brief is a longitudinal study of the APC list prices of a large sample of journals whose publishers have been included in DOAJ. There are other aspects of the APC that could be (or are being) usefully addressed by other researchers, such as what payers are actually paying, hybrid journals, quantity and qualities of articles published (qualities could include length, language, formats, linking within articles), etc. If anyone has time and energy to conduct research in this area, there is plenty of work.

best,

Heather Morrison


-------- Original message --------
From: Dietrich Rordorf <drordorf at gmail.com>
Date: 08-08-2016 1:48 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] MDPI APCs 2011 - 2016

Dear Dr. Morrison,

I think that you make a very strong assumption of equal distribution of journal sizes, which to me does not hold up to a reality check. Because of this the "average" APC you compute is three to four times lower compared to what authors/institutions actually pay to MDPI per paper in average.

To complete your history of APC changes, you may also want to consider the following websites (or their archived counterparts, in case they are taken offline):

http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2011 (http://weblock.io/8E4P1NWIOG)
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2012 (http://weblock.io/RO6RKQRHM6)
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2013 (http://weblock.io/8E4P1NNIQ4)
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2014 (http://weblock.io/YVLDG6ZHR1)
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2015 (http://weblock.io/3YK2L6RUWD)
http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc-2016 (http://weblock.io/6Z4WKM6B2)

Kind regards,
Dietrich Rordorf

E-mail: drordorf at gmail.com<mailto:drordorf at gmail.com>
Tel. +41 76 561 41 83

2016-07-29 16:58 GMT+02:00 Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>>:
A preliminary version of our MDPI APC longitudinal study is now available:
https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/07/29/mdpi-apc-fdp-2011-2016/

In brief

MDPI is a new commercial publisher committed to the APC model, with a not uncommon approach of free publication for new journals. Thanks to Solomon and Björk, we have APC data for 25 journals for both 2011 and 2016. The average APC for this group of journals increased from 624 CHF in 2011 to 1,148 CHF in 2016, an average increase of 524 CHF or an 84% price increase in contrast to a compound U.S. inflation rate during this time frame of 8.7% (EU would have been lower).

>From 2014 to 2015, MDPI journals either stayed at the same APC or lowered their price. From 2015 to 2016, all journals either stayed the same in price or increased in price, with the average increase 18% or 60 CHF.

As of March 2016, MDPI listed 155 journals on their website. Of these, almost half (72) are <<free>>. The average APC is 359 CHF (662 CHF when non-charging journals are excluded).

This small case study illustrates the importance for APC payers to take this model into account to predict future budget needs. MDPI’s overall average APC today is a fraction of the average charged for a sample of established journals.

Note that for purposes of the Sustaining the Knowledge Commons project, APC journals that are <<free for now>> are categorized as APC journals with APC of $0, to avoid confusion with journals that are not committed to the APC approach.

Thanks to Tanoh Laurent Kakou for data analysis.

best,

--
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>



_______________________________________________
GOAL mailing list
GOAL at eprints.org<mailto:GOAL at eprints.org>
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20160808/fdf50f43/attachment.html