Update December 2019: for the latest version of the OA APC longitudinal survey (which includes the 2015 data), see this post: https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/27/oa-apc-longitudinal-survey-2019/

Friday May 15, 2015 is the beginning of the 2015 data-gathering for the OA APC project. This post will report work-in-progress illustrating the open research approach.

The DOAJ metadata file was downloaded Friday May 15 at 8:00 a.m. EST, using the instructions on how to download and save the file without messing up the characters. I found the simplest way to do this was to save the .csv file then open in Open Office. Our internal shared Google Drive had no difficulty retaining the characters. I had no success with my version of Excel (mac user). The DOAJ metadata file has been posted to the OA APC dataverse.

Some basic facts and statistics as of today

From DOAJ metadata (csv file)

• 10,532 journals listed in DOAJ
• Publication fee and further information (for publication fee) columns are blank in DOAJ metadata (we have a saved file from Nov. 2013 where this information was still available which we’ll be using to find journals with APCs as the latest available)
• Content in DOAJ column indicates “Yes” for all journals which is not correct

From the DOAJ website

• 10,532 journals
• 6,325 searchable at article level
• 134 countries
• 1,902,039 articles

What percentage of journals in DOAJ charge APCs? There is no up to date information on this question at this point in time. The best estimate is about 30 – 32%, based on historical data from DOAJ. The reason this information is not up to date: DOAJ has asked all journals to re-apply in order to provide better information and to date just over 10% have done this. The 30 – 32% is virtually identical to what we found last year, i.e. 26% of DOAJ journals at that time had charges and 5% were “conditional” with respect to charges. The “conditional” category has disappeared, so the 26% + 5% = 31%. The 1% difference could be a rounding error. This is not surprising as DOAJ has not updated this information since March 2014.

Now on to looking up publisher OA APC charges and getting the data into our spreadsheet and other files so that we can do some analysis. I’ll post updates from time to time.

Possibly of interest

Loyalty discount: Libertas Academica offers discounts to former authors as well as peer reviewers – their language on transparency / separation of payment and editorial functions may be of interest as well.

This post is part of the open access article processing charges project.

Cite as:

Morrison, H. (2015). OA APC survey May 2015 work-in-progress. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/15/oa-apc-survey-may-2015-work-in-progress/