[GOAL] 12 Copernicus journals tripled (or quadrupled) OA page charges this year

[Heather Morrison]

Highlights

On June 1, 2016, German-based commercial open access publisher Copernicus endorsed OA2020 <http://www.copernicus.org/news_and_press/2016-06-01_copernicus-publications-endorses-oa2020.html>, an “an international initiative to support the swift, smooth, and scholarly oriented transformation of journals from print subscription to open-access publishing”.  Half of Copernicus’ journals (12) for which we have numeric data for both 2015 and 2016 tripled or in some cases quadrupled their page charges from 2015 to 2016. Coincidence? The rest of this group of journals (10 journals) showed no change in price or modest increases. There were 18 journals for which I found no data with which to compare. Of these, 1 is clearly sponsored and free of charge; 6 are “currently waived”; 4 are “cost not specified”, i.e. the website indicates a charge will be applied but the amount is not given; 3 are “no cost found”, i.e. presumably free but no clear language to confirm; 3 are “title not found” and 1 title that was free last year began to implement charges in 2016. Following are comments: in brief, the price changes illustrate what I call the volatility of the market suggesting it may be too early for OA2020 as pricing is not stable, and I suggest that the topics of many of the journals which touch on things like drinking water quality, climate change and ocean science, would support an argument for public sponsorship of research dissemination in these areas that are important public priorities in the present and near future. Full data is available in charges below.

Details and data: https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/07/05/12-copernicus-journals-tripled-page-charges-this-year/

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