by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Review of Sage Open access database in 2019 shows that the number of their open access journals is growing, they are still following article processing charge model and their payment model is still pricey.

Sage currently publishes 1,200 journals. Of these, 200 journals (about 17%) are fully open access. Compared to the last year’s data, there is a net increase of 41 open access journals (26% increase) published by Sage. Out of all open access journals, 185 journals (92 percent) have publication fees, 14 journals have no publication charges and 1 journal lacks the information whether it has processing fee or not.

Some journals from the previous years ceased publication and Sage has removed them from their database, but only a few of them are accessible through clockss.org archive.

The information regarding the number of open access journals by Sage are summarized into the following table:

Out of the journals with processing charge, 172 journals charge ‘article processing fee’, 2 journals charge ‘per page processing fee’ and 11 articles lack the exact amount and way of processing fee.

Pricing

The average actual price for article processing fee in 2019 is $1475 that indicates a slight decrease comparing to the average price of $1513 in 2018.

Compared to last year’s data, most journals have no change in article processing charge while 23 journals have an increase and 20 journals have a decrease in the amount of article processing charge. The average increase in price is about $587 and the average decrease in price is $449.

The following pie chart and table summarize the difference between processing fees in 2018 and 2019.

You could download the raw data for Sage 2019 open access journals here:

For more information about the previous years data for Sage publications, see the following links:

Ceased and transferred publications and archiving: best practices and room for improvement

SAGE Publications 2016 & 2017 Data Analysis (including Libertas Academica)

Cite as:

Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2019). Sage in 2019: Growing in OA journals, still expensive, complex pricing trends. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/03/30/sage-in-2019-growing-in-oa-journals-still-expensive-complex-pricing-trends/