BioMed Central and Directory of Open Access Journals (2016)

If you look at the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) you will see that some journals have Article Processing Charges (APCs) listed. So why are we still gathering APC data? Two reasons: one is to check the accuracy and completeness of the DOAJ APC data, and the other is that we gather more detail on the model than what is captured in DOAJ.  BioMed Central (BMC) offers one good illustration – while DOAJ includes a single figure¹ for APC amount, BMC provides pricing in 3 currencies on its website.

306 titles are listed on BMC’s website (2016, February 22)², and 289 BMC titles are listed in DOAJ.  When comparing the two lists of journal titles we found that 274 matched.

• Of the 274 matching titles, only 38 (14%) provided an APC in DOAJ
• Of the 38, the number of titles with an accurate APC was 15 out of 38 (40%)
• 23 of the 38 APCs (60%) did not match
• Two of the 38 (5%) had a higher APC in DOAJ
• 21 of 38 (55%) had a lower APC in DOAJ

In summary, only 15 of the 289 (5%) BMC journals have accurate APCs listed in DOAJ.

Table 1. Comparison of the 38 APCs from BMC’s website and DOAJ

BioMed Central Article Processing Charges Between 2015 and 2016

The chart below compares APCs listed on BMC’s website from May 15, 2015 with February 22, 2016.  Most (65%) APCs have stayed the same, however 34% have increased.

Note: This is our first post on BMC this year.  We are doing more longitudinal work and will report back soon.

I would like to thank Jihane Salhab for allowing me to build on her work.

Footnotes

1. BMC’s APC currency in DOAJ is usually GBP (Pound Sterling).
2. As of March 30, 2016, BMC no longer has the table of APCs available on its website that was used for this price comparison.

Cite as:

Wheatley, S. (2016, March 23). BioMed Central Article Processing Charges. Retrieved December 13, 2019, from Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs website: https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/03/23/biomed-central-article-processing-charges/