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

Ross Mounce ross.mounce at gmail.com
Wed Jul 6 10:56:02 BST 2016 

Thanks for the clarification Xenia.

We all agree it's important to keep an eye on the pricing of scholarly
communications but Copernicus are the clearly the wrong 'target' here.

Let's not make good and fair publishers our 'enemies'!



On 6 July 2016 at 08:59, Xenia van Edig <xenia.van.edig at copernicus.org>
wrote:

> Dear Heather,
>
> It is good to see that pricing of OA publishers is closely monitored and
> observed. In our case, however, your accusations are incorrect. We have not
> doubled or even tripled the article processing charges as you have stated
> in your email and your blog post.
>
> To understand the changes in our pricing, it is essential to understand
> our publishing model: Copernicus Publications publishes two types of
> journals: Let’s focus on the 18 of the 38 journals we publish that apply
> Interactive Public Peer Review as those are the ones that had their prices
> changed.
>
> Interactive Public Peer Review is a two-stage publication process that
> involves the publication of the author’s manuscript as a discussion paper
> in an online and open-access discussion forum. The referee reports as well
> as additional comments are published there in addition to part of the
> peer-review process (
> http://publications.copernicus.org/services/public_peer_review.html).
>
> From 2001 to2015 we typeset these discussion papers and the article
> processing charges (APCs) were based on this “first” publication, not on
> the final revised paper. In January 2016, we changed the publication and
> accounting process for all journals applying Interactive Public Peer
> Review. There were two main reasons for this. On the one hand, we do not
> typeset the discussion papers anymore. This should help to make clear that
> the discussion papers are rather preprints and not the versions of record.
> On the other hand, the practice of charging for the discussion papers was
> especially difficult for funders since they usually only fund final papers
> (accepted after the completion of the peer-review process). Thereby, the
> APCs have to be paid once the final revised paper is published.
>
> Regarding the article processing charges, the old discussion-paper style
> resulted in three times more pages than the classic manuscript style, and
> tables and figures were counted as extra pages (due to the discussion-paper
> format) when calculating the total cost of publishing a paper. Here is an
> example of this former model:
>
> A manuscript contains 10 pages with 57,000 characters, 2 figures, and 1
> table. The discussion paper will have 30 pages text + 1 page table + 2
> pages figures. For Category 2, this will result in 33 pages × €25 = €825
> net + 19% German VAT.
>
> In the new model, the APCs were adjusted to account for the fact that they
> are based on the final article page rather than on the discussion paper
> page. The overall costs of publishing a paper have essentially remained the
> same because there are three times fewer pages in a paper in classic
> manuscript style than in one in discussion-paper style. Here is the example
> above in the new payment model:
>
> A manuscript contains 10 pages with 57,000 characters, and an additional
> page with 2 figures and 1 table. For Category 2, this will result in
> approx. 11 pages final revised paper × €75 = €825 net + 19% German VAT.
>
> These changes are clearly and transparently stated on our websites (thank
> you for linking to them) and were explained to authors, editors, and
> referees in press releases and community mailings.
>
> Thus saying that our prices have increased by 200% is blatantly incorrect.
> It compares apples to oranges.
>
> For further clarification, 24 of our journals have APCs. All these
> journals are owned by learned societies or scientific institutions. For
> seven journals APCs are waived by the owners of these journals. For some
> journals there are no intentions to introduce APCs; for others the owners
> are planning to implement fees in the future. If fees are introduced, this
> usually happens in two steps. Three journals are financed via conferences.
> For three journals Copernicus waives the fees. In addition, we have four
> journals on our website which either ceased publication or were transferred
> to another publisher.
>
> Openness and transparency is very important to us and we know that we do
> things differently than other publishers. If you have any questions on our
> pricing scheme or on any other aspect of our work, we are happy to answer
> them.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Xenia
>
> ****************************************************
> Copernicus.org
> Meetings & Open Access Publications
>
> Dr. Xenia van Edig
> Business Development
>
> Copernicus GmbH
> Bahnhofsallee 1e
> 37081 Göttingen
> Germany
>
> Phone: +49 551 90 03 39 18
> Fax: +49 551 90 03 39 90 18
>
> http://www.copernicus.org
> @copernicus_org
> ****************************************************
> Copernicus Gesellschaft mbH
> USt-IdNr.: DE216566440
> Based in Göttingen, Germany
> Registered in HRB 131 298
> County Court Göttingen
> Managing Director Thies Martin Rasmussen
> ****************************************************
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Silke Hartmann
> Sent: 06 Jul 2016 07:44
> To: Xenia van Edig
> Subject: FW: [GOAL] 12 Copernicus journals tripled (or quadrupled) OA page
> charges this year
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On
> Behalf Of Heather Morrison
> Sent: 05 Jul 2016 18:22
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] 12 Copernicus journals tripled (or quadrupled) OA page
> charges this year
>
> 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
>
>
>
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-- 
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Ross Mounce, PhD
Software Sustainability Institute Fellow 2016
Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge
www.rossmounce.co.uk <http://rossmounce.co.uk/>
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