[GOAL] Copernicus pricing: retraction of assessment of price tripling, re-affirming assessment of market volatility

Thu Jul 7 21:07:02 BST 2016

thanks Silke.

I have updated the post again - highlights that may interest list members:

Data change for 2 journals - ESurf and GI were “currently waived” as of June 15, 2016 but as of July 1, 2016 have page charges of €50 to €120

Clarification of my category “cost not specified”. The reason 4 journals were classified this way is because of language on their APC pages stating APCs “are" levied as of Jan. 1, 2016 but that charges are “currently waived”. This is conflicting language that suggests that there is an APC without giving the amount. That is what my category “cost not specified” is meant to cover. As per the sentence above, 2 of these journals have now implemented APCs and posted the amounts. I do not mean to suggest that the journals aim to deceive authors, rather that this language could be used in a situation where a submitting author might believe that the APC will be waived while an APC could be instituted in between submission and publication. This is not, in my opinion, a good practice. When journals are considering implementing APCs, to avoid confusion I recommend that a date be set in advance and clear information provided to potential authors before they submit. 

best,

Heather Morrison

> On Jul 7, 2016, at 11:48 AM, Silke Hartmann <silke.hartmann at copernicus.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Heather, 
>  
> Thank you for updating the blog post. As Xenia will be on holiday from tomorrow on, I will take over commenting on the remaining issues.
>  
> Since Copernicus charges APCs on a page-by-page basis and not per article, it is not possible to compare article prices when the lengths of the articles are not taken into consideration. When comparing 2015 and 2016 papers, the changes in our publication process have to be taken into consideration, too. But even with these changes we do not see the 17–24% increase of the ACPs at all.
>  
> Regarding the websites for which there is no information on APCs, the journals neither have APCs now nor do they intend to obtain APCs in the future. We will discuss stating this more explicitly on the respective journal websites. Thank you for this feedback. The six journals that state that their APCs are currently waived indeed intend to introduce APCs at some point in the future or want to keep this option open at least. The four journals that you list as “cost not specified” do inform about their APCs (or the lack thereof) on their websites. I have commented on the APCs chart in more detail on your blog.
>  
> Best regards,
> Silke Hartmann
>  
>  
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
> Sent: 06 Jul 2016 15:21
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Copernicus pricing: retraction of assessment of price tripling, re-affirming assessment of market volatility
>  
> Thanks to Xenia van Edig (of Copernicus) and Dirk Pieper for providing new substantive evidence. Following are highlights of my update. New blog post title: Copernicus 2015-2016 comparison
>  
> Update July 6, 2016: 
>  
> I retract my statement on tripling of page charges thanks to new evidence indicating that the difference reflects a change in the stage at which papers are assessed (now final publication stage generally one-third the pages of discussion paper stage). The change is intended to be revenue-neutral but more data from APC payers would be needed to confirm this. 2015 data from the Open APC project includes values for 2 journals with papers at both stages, and prices paid are 17-24% higher for papers at the final publication stage. I re-affirm my assessment of the volatility of the APC market. I found 6 journals with APCs indicated "currently waived", presumably journals that will charge APCs of unknown quantities in future. I found 4 journals that referred to APCs without specifying the cost and 2 journals with no indication of whether or not there is a cost. This is a very substantial percentage of Copernicus' journals for which the answer to the questions "is there an APC or APPC, and if so, how much is it?" is not available on the Copernicus' website. I regard Copernicus as a model OA publisher. It is likely that this situation reflects journals that would rather not charge APCs, feel they must charge APCs but are not sure how much to charge, etc., rather than deliberate obfuscation. 
>  
> Clarification for the GOAL list: the OA APC project is a longitudinal study of APC prices intended to be inclusive of all publishers with APCs, or at least all that are or have been included in DOAJ at some point in time. The purpose is to watch for early signs of trends to assist in ensuring that transition to OA is sustainable. A premature push for global universal funding of OA via APC based on data likely to undergo significant shifts in the next few years risks global failure and potential burn-out of some of OA’s best friends and supporters.
> No journal or publisher is targeted or an enemy. The Sustaining the Knowledge Commons blog includes a number of case studies. I/we publish these whenever we notice something different or interesting and someone has time to write a post. Critique is a necessary part of advancing our knowledge. 
>  
> 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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-- 
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