by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison
We review article processing charge (APC) for approximately 4,000 open access journals from more than 20 major publishers and a lot of small publishers on an annual basis. But our spreadsheet includes about 9,000 journals on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) that we have not collected data as of August 2019. Most of these journals do not charge APCs.
Although APC data for open access journals is mentioned on the DOAJ website, we are not sure whether these data are up to date. Based on the previous year’s experience, DOAJ APC data can be quite different from what we see on publisher websites.
In order to test the usability of the data on DOAJ website and see how much we could actually rely on this information, we decided to randomly compare the data for 100 journals on the publishers websites to the data on DOAJ.
Research Randomizer (https://www.randomizer.org) was used to select a set of 100 row numbers within the range of journals with DOAJ provenance.
The comparison of data on publishers websites to DOAJ website for the 100 sample journals showed that the information for 7 journals did not match at all, 23 journals were matched substantially (e.g. it was mentioned as no APC on the DOAJ website while there was nothing mentioned about the cost on the publisher website), and 70 journals had exact match.
The seven journals that did not have the same information on the publishers websites comparing to DOAJ website are listed in the following table:
| Title of the journal | APC on the publisher website | APC on the DOAJ website |
| Advances in Applied Agricultural Sciences | 75 USD | No article processing charge |
| Share: Jurnal Ekonomi dan Keuangan Islam | 70 USD | No article processing charge |
Journal of Educational Sciences |
750,000 IDR |
500,000 IDR |
| Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural | 150 USD | No article processing charge |
| Volt: Jurnal Ilmiah Pendidikan Teknik Elektro | 40 USD | No article processing charge |
| Journal of Business Management (مدیریت بازرگانی) | 35 USD | No article processing charge |
| Bìznes Inform | 50 UAH (per page) | No article processing charge |
In conclusion, 93 percent of the 100 titles matched either exactly or substantially. This is sufficient to consider the data usable with a note to the effect that some data may have changed since the DOAJ entry. It may be worth noting that when change is noticed the direction is from non-charging to charging. As context note that data obtained directly from publisher’s websites frequently changes as well.
Cite as:
Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2019). Comparing the APC for random sample of journals on publishers website to DOAJ. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/09/18/comparing-the-apc-for-random-sample-of-journals-on-publishers-website-to-doaj/
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs 