[GOAL] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ)

[Heather Morrison]

Following is a summary of recent APC changes for 4 publishers, prepared on request but posted in case this might be of interest to anyone else. In brief, each publisher appears to be following a different pricing strategy ranging from flat pricing over many years with one rare exception, to a tenfold increase from 2016 - 2017.


BioMedCentral: mixed picture

* 269 journals with numeric data 2017 and 2018 (April 4 sampling date both years)
* 20 with price increases of 2% - 83% (30 - 620 GBP)
* 5 with price decreases of 1% - 15% (15 - 205 GBP)
* Of interest: 25 journals with no publication fee (appears to be society / university sponsorship)
* Of concern: 44 journals with "title not found": some will reflect earlier title drop


Hindawi April 2016 - November 2017: mixed picture, price increases a bit concerning

* 281 journals with numeric data for 2016 and 2017 (including 0 = free for now*)
* 99 journals have price increases ranging from 14 - 108% (100% = price has doubled), increases of 250 - 650 USD
* 115 journals have no change in pricing
* 45 journals have price decreases of 6 - 25%, 50 - 100 USD
* Of interest: 230 Predecessor journals (ISRN series): good practice
* Of concern: 186 title not found (not limited to 2017), excluding predecessor

*Rotating free journals: 5 of the 281 journals were free in 2016; 1 is still free, the other 4 have APCs of 1250 - 1750 USD. 17 journals that had an APC in 2016 were free in 2017. Paul Peters sent an e-mail explaining this strategy a few years ago.


PLOS ONE: flat pricing with one exception
>From 2014 - 2018, there has been only one price change for PLOS journals: PLOS ONE was $1,350 USD in 2014 and is $1,495 USD today. The sample date was December 2017, a visual scan confirms the same prices are in effect as of April 13, 2018.


PeerJ: tenfold price increase from 2016 - 2017 (99 USD - 1,095 USD); new journal PeerJ Computer Science is 895 USD.

See also yesterday's post


Frontiers: 40% of journals have price increases from 18 - 31%<https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/04/12/frontiers-40-journals-have-apc-increases-of-18-31-from-2017-to-2018/>.


Blog post link (text is the same):


https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/04/13/recent-apc-price-changes-for-4-publishers-bmc-hindawi-plos-peerj/


best,


Heather Morrison

Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa

Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org

https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
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