Authors other than PI

Diminution de l’APC des revues publiées par le Scientific Research Publishing

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Entre 2015 et 2016, il semblerait qu’il y ait eu un arrêt, temporaire ou permanent, de l’indexation des revues de l’éditeur Scientific Research Publishing par le Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), pour une raison inconnue. En effet, l’éditeur publie toujours les revues sous sa responsabilité en libre accès. La consultation du site de l’éditeur nous apprend toutefois que les frais associés à la publication d’articles ont diminué en 2016 par rapport à ceux de 2015. Parmi les 66 revues publié par Scientific Research Publishing et indexées en 2015 par DOAJ[1]

  • 20 revues n’ont pas augmenté leurs frais de publication
  • 17 revues ont diminué leurs frais de publication d’au moins 100$
  • 21 revues ont diminué leurs frais de publication d’au moins 200$
  • 5 revues ont diminué leurs frais de publication d’au moins 300$
  • 2 revues ont diminué leurs frais de publication d’au moins 400$

Capture d’écran 2016-03-30 à 09.38.12

Nous constatons donc une diminution des frais de publication pour 69% des revues publiées par le Scientific Research Publishing et anciennement recensées pas le DOAJ.

 

[1] Les données compilées ne tiennent compte que des revues indexées par DOAJ en 2015, bien que le site de l’éditeur Scientific Research Publishing compte un nombre plus important de titres.

Citation: Dumais-DesRosiers, M. (2016). Diminution de l’APC des revues publiées par le Scientific Research Publishing. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/03/30/diminution-de-lapc-des-revues-publiees-par-le-scientific-research-publishing/

BioMed Central Article Processing Charges

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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

BMC DOAJ 2016 Comparison

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.

Screenshot (27)

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/

Editorial: Open access, copyright and licensing: basics for open access publishers

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by Heather Morrison & Lisa Desautels

Just published (February 2016) in the open access Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports at the invitation of Editor-In-Chief Dr. Ashok Shyam: Editorial: open access, copyright and licensing: basics for open access publishers. Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports 6:1 p. 1-2. DOI: 10.13107/jocr.2250-0685.360

Cite the original article (not this blogpost) as:

Morrison, H., & Desautels, L. (2016). Editorial – Open access, copyright and licensing: Basics for open access publishers. Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports. Retrieved from http://www.jocr.co.in/wp/2016/01/02/2250-0685-360-fulltext/

OA APC preliminary data 2015: range, central tendencies and preliminary longitudinal analysis

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by Heather Morrison & Jihane Salhab

Noting the important caveat of the mythical nature of “the OA APC” as a single per-article price, following are the range, central tendencies and some highlights from our 2015 OA APC data.

Note that a2015APCll prices are in USD.

 

 

 

Highlights

The overall average of journals sampled in 2015 was $998, compared to $964 in 2014 and $906 reported by Solomon & Björk in 2010. These are modest average increases (4% 2014 – 2015, 2% per year from 2010 – 2015). However, the average may mask contradictory tendencies, such as low or no fees for new journals to attract content obscuring increases for journals that either are, or are be2014-15 price changescoming, established.

From 2014 – 2015 on a per-title basis there was a fairly even 3-way split between journals that retained the same price, increased or decreased their price.

Different publishers show different tendencies. Hindawi, the largest OA publisher by number of journals, has such an 2015apcnohindawiimpact we are beginning to call this the “Hindawi factor”. In 2015, the overall mode (most common price) is $800, while the mode without Hindawi is $2,145. The following two charts illustrate the variation in pricing tendencies from 2010 – 2015 for the two largest OA APC publishers, Hindawi and BMC, reflecting the differences in approach to pricing for these publishers over the same time frame.

hindawi 20102015 BMC20102015 APC 2010 to 2015

The above chart shows a relatively steady average and median in contrast with a varying mode (most common price) from 2010 – 2015.

It is important to note that the samples are not entirely comparable. Notably, to facilitate the longitudinal study we have not included new publishers listed in DOAJ as of 2015. This is an important limitation. For example,  DeGruyter, not present in 2014, is the 3rd largest DOAJ publisher in 2015. The following details illustrate that the average cost-to-publish in a fully OA journal with publication fees in 2015 varies from about $250 USD to $2,145 USD, depending on the measure and particular sample of journals selected.

Details

Range: $0 – $4,500

$0 APC = journals has APCs but currently price is $0. Most commonly this is used by journals that are “free for now” until more content is added.

Average (mean) Median Mode Standard deviation
Preliminary sample (all) 1,051

 

 800 800 795
Preliminary sample (weighted) 858
Preliminary sample (excluding $0 APC) 1114
Preliminary sample (excluding $0 APC) weighted 1370

Preliminary sample: includes the 1,363 journals sampled in 2010, 2013 and/or 2014 confirmed as using APCs (excluding journals using APPC but not APC). APC of $0 (journals for which APC method is confirmed but no current charges, e.g. “free for now” approach) are included unless otherwise specified. The weighted figures adjust by a sampling factor designed to give added weight to journals from categories with lower rates of sampling, journals by publishers with less than 10 journals using APCs.

Full sample: 1,999 journals including preliminary sample plus additional journals sampled from publisher’s website.

Average (mean) Median Mode
All 998

 

 800 600
Weighted 866
Excluding $0 APC 1,077

 
Excluding $0 APC) weighted 1,034

 

See above for description of “weighted”.

More details will be posted as our data analysis continues.

Cite as:

Morrison, H., & Salhab, J. (2015). OA APC preliminary data 2015: Range, central tendencies and preliminary longitudinal analysis. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/12/03/oa-apc-preliminary-data-2015-range-central-tendencies-and-preliminary-longitudinal-analysis/

Variations in pricing of the article processing charges

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Version en français (French version)

From the datasets downloaded from the Directory of Open Access Journal, we did some analysis. We found that among the journals that do offer article processing charges (APC), 87 % of them offer variations. So that the APC that the author expects to pay could be higher or lower. Those fluctuations depend on many factors. For example an article that requires language editing would have higher APC and if the author comes from a low/medium income countries then the APC will decrease. The table one shows the percentage of journals offering variations in pricing. The table 2 shows the list of the most frequent factors that contribute to APC variations.

Table 1. Percentage of journals offering variations in pricing (2015).

variations

Table 2. Frequency of sub-types of variations.

table2

Please note that we did not count every variation found. For example, variations likely based on simultaneous print versions of journals such as colour charges were not capture.

Cite as: Mondésir, G. (2015). Variations in pricing of the article processing charges. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/12/03/variations-in-pricing-of-the-article-processing-charges/

Variation dans les frais de publications de l’article

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Version en anglais (English version)

Nous avons analysé la liste de journaux en libre accès téléchargé du site internet du répertoire des revues en libre accès (DOAJ). Nos résultats nous démontrent que parmi les journaux qui adoptent comme modèle d’affaire la méthode de frais de publication de l’article, 87 % de ces journaux offrent une variation des frais de publication. Cela signifie que les frais que l’auteur s’attende à payer peuvent augmenter ou diminuer. Les frais supplémentaires peuvent être dû pour plusieurs raisons. Par exemple, il peut y avoit une charge additionnelle si le nombre de page excéde la limite fixée par l’éditeur. De la même manière plusieurs raisons peuvent expliquer une réduction des frais de publication de l’auteur. Par exemple, l’auteur a utilisé le gabarit de l’éditeur pour rédiger son article. Le tableau 1 montre le pourcentage de journaux dont les frais de publication de l’article peuvent varier. L’année dernière des résultats semblables ont été publiés dans cet article.

Table 1. Pourcentage de journaux ayant de frais de publication avec des variations.

variations

Table 2. Les différentes sortes de variations dans les frais de publication.

table2

Nous n’avons pas compté tous les types de variations. Par exemple, les frais de publication qui semble d’être plus pertinente aux versions imprimé (frais de couleurs) sont omis ici.

Citation:

Mondésir, G. (2015). Variation dans les frais de publications de l’article. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/12/03/variation-dans-les-frais-de-publications-de-larticle/

 

Top 10 publishers in DOAJ (by number of titles) 2014 to 2015

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by Heather Morrison & Guinsly Mondésir

There have been a few changes in the collection of fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals in the past year, as demonstrated by the following chart. While Hindawi and BioMedCentral remain the largest publishers (by number of journals, not number of articles), traditional publisher De Gruyter has gone from no titles in DOAJ in 2014 to 3rd largest DOAJ publisher and Elsevier is now the 7th largest DOAJ publisher by number of journals. Figures are based on an analysis of publisher by size drawn by DOAJ metadata downloaded in May 2014 and May 2015. Full data is available in the OA APC dataverse

Note that publisher size by title offerings is different from publisher size by number of articles published, which is outside the scope of our study. The percentage of journals in DOAJ published by the top 10 publishers has increased slightly, from 14% to 16%. This is likely not a significant difference, but perhaps an indication of a trend to watch. Note that we have made no attempt to correct for variations in publisher name listings; we recommend instead that publishers update their information in DOAJ and ensure correct entry for future research and researchers.

Publisher Frequency_2014 Publisher Frequency_2015
Hindawi Publishing Corporation 438 Hindawi Publishing Corporation 539
BioMed Central 238 BioMed Central 271
Scientific Research Publishing 119 De Gruyter Open 212
Bentham open 99 MDPI AG 121
MDPI AG 95 Springer 108
Springer 95 Dove Medical Press 105
Dove Medical Press 91 Bentham open 81
Medknow Publications 80 Medknow Publications 78
Libertas Academica 49 Elsevier 72
PAGEPress Publications 47 Libertas Academica 56
Total top 10 publishers 1,351 1,643
DOAJ total 9,709 10,532
% published by top 10 14% 16%

 

Update: This article influenced two articles Reblog: Top 10 publishers in DOAJ (by number of titles) 2014 to 2015 and DE GRUYTER – Traditional Scholarly Publisher’s Shift Towards Open Access. The Facts Behind the Numbers

Cite as:

Morrison, H., & Mondésir, G. (2015). Top 10 publishers in DOAJ (by number of titles) 2014 to 2015. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/10/22/top-10-publishers-in-doaj-by-number-of-titles-2014-to-2015/

Sustaining the Knowledge Commons – Open Access Scholarship, IDRC 2015

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Cite the original presentation as:

Morrison, H., & Salhab, J. (2015, September). Sustaining the knowledge commons: Open access scholarship, IDRC. Overview of the Sustaining the Knowledge Commons project presented at the International Development Reesarch Center (IDRC), Ottawa. Retrieved from http://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/32845

The presentation powerpoint can also be downloaded from this link.

DOAJ, Impact Factor and APCs

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by César Villamizar and Heather Morrison

In May 2015 we conducted a pilot study correlating OA APCs and the journal impact factor, using data from 2010, 2013 and 2014. Here are some early results:

  • about 10% of the journals listed in JCR are DOAJ journals
  • over 10% of the journals listed in DOAJ have an impact factor
  • about 40% of the DOAJ IF journals had an APC as of May 2015 (estimate; higher than overall journals with APC)
  • average APC of IF journals in 2014 more than double overall average APC ($1,948 as compared with overall average of $964)
  • average APCs of IF journals increased by 7% in a 5-month period from 2013 to 2014 and by 16% from 2010 to 2014
  • over 80% of APC / IF journals increased price by 6% or more in a 5-month period from December 2013 to May 2014
  • about 20% of APC / IF journals increased price by 10% or more in a 5-month period from December 2013 to May 2014
  • 7% of APC / IF journals increased price by 20% or more in a 5-month period from December 2013 to May 2014

Conclusion: about 10% of DOAJ journals have impact factors, and about 10% of impact factor journals are DOAJ journals. Open access journals (or some OA journals) using the APC business model may be exploiting impact factor status as a means to raise prices. Further investigation warranted.

Details

As of May 3, 2015, Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports (JCR) listed 11,619 journals with impact factor (IF). Of these, 1,146 are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). As of May 15, 2015, 10,532 journals were listed in DOAJ. This means that 9.8% of the titles listed in JCR are DOAJ titles, and 10.8% of DOAJ journals have an IF.

The pilot involved selecting half of the DOAJ journals with an IF (572 journals from both sciences and social sciences, selected alphabetically abbreviated title A – J Otolaryngol-Head and looking up the quartile and subject ranking. Of these titles, 169 were included in the May 2014 OA APC sample. For 126 journals data was available for both December 2013 and May 2014, the basis of the 2013-2014 calculations. Assuming that the portion of APC-charging journals would be the same for non-sampled journals, this would result in an estimate of 229 journals with IF and APC, 40% of the total. This is higher than the 26% of journals with APCs as of May 2014.

Stats of the 572 in DOAJ with impact factor (pilot):

  • 42.1% of the journals are in the quartile four (Q4), 27.2% of the journals are in the quartile three (Q4), 18.9% of the journals are in the quartile two (Q2), and 11.8% of the journals are in the quartile one (Q1)
    • 69% of the journals are in the Q4 and Q3
    • 31% of the journals are in the Q2 and Q1

DOAJIFquartile

 

  • Out of the 572 journals,
    • APC data by year
      • 2010 B&S : 176
      • Dec 2013 SKC : 129
      • May 2014 SKC : 169
  • We have 126 journals with APC information collected in Dec 2013 SKC and May 2014 SKC
  • We have 110 journals with APC information collected in 2010 S&B,Dec 2013 SKC and May 2014 SKC.

Stats of the 126 journals with APC Data (Dec 2013 SKC – May 2014 SKC)

  • 17,5% of the journals are in the quartile four (Q4), 38,1% of the journals are in the quartile three (Q4), 30,2% of the journals are in the quartile two (Q2), and 14,3% of the journals are in the quartile one (Q1)
    • 55,5% of the journals are in the Q4 and Q3
    • 45,5% of the journals are in the Q2 and Q1

DOAJIFallapcs

  • 3,2% of the journals decreased their APC (this is 3 journals; 2 are Hindawi journals. Hindawi as of May 2014 had a practice of rotating free publication. These 2 journals had APCs of 0 in 2014, but have substantial prices today (Bioinorganic Chemistry Applications is now $1,250 and International Journal of Genomics is now $1,500). The third journal with an apparent small price decrease, Experimental Animals, from $200 to $198 USD is likely an anomaly due to a weakening of the main currency, the Japanese Yen, with respect to the USD. In other words, all price decreases appear to be temporary anomalies.
  • 14,3% of the journals maintained their APC
  • 82,5% of the journals increased their APC at least 6.4%
    • 3,1% increased their APC between 6,4% and 7,49%
    • 54,8% increased their APC between 7,5% and 9,49%
    • 15% increased their APC between 9,5% and 13,9%
    • 7% increased their APC between 14% and 25%

The following figure reflects the 123 titles remaining after removing the 2 anomalous 0 APC titles.

DOAJIFAPC201314increasewhite

The following chart illustrates the percentage of journals by price increase from 2013 to 2014.

DOAJIFAPC201314percentincrease

APC 2010 USD APC 2013 USD APC 2014 USD
Max 2,165 2,420 2,650
Min 500 – –
Min greater than zero 500 200 198
Median 1,825 2,060 2,215
Mode 1,825 2,060 2,215
Average 1,637 1,808 1,948
  • Medicine and Biology and Life Science represents 81,1% of the journals categories susceptible to charge APCs
    • 3% of the journals in these two categories increased their APC at least in 6.4%
    • 9% increased their APC between 6.4% and 7.49%
    • 1% increased their APC between 7.5% and 9.49%
    • 50% increased their APC between 9.5% and 13.9%
    • 8% increased their APC between 14% and 25%

Note and references

2010 data courtesy of Solomon, D.J. & Björk, B.C. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. The Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2012. Retrieved May 31, 2015 from http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/apc2/ (data unpublished)

2014 data: Morrison H, Salhab J, Calvé-Genest A, Horava T. Open Access Article Processing Charges: DOAJ Survey May 2014. Publications. 2015; 3(1):1-16. http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/3/1/1

Cite as:

Villamizar, C., & Morrison, H. (2015). DOAJ, Impact Factor and APCs. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/06/01/doaj-impact-factor-and-apcs/

In the E.U.? Your USD APCs cost 21% more than a year ago

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by Jihane Salhab and Heather Morrison

The following chart and table (thanks to Jihane) are designed to illustrate the impact of currency fluctuations on OA APCs assuming an international approach to publishing. If you are in the E.U., an APC in USD that has not changed in price over the past year will cost you 21% more today than it did a year ago, due solely to the rising strength of the U.S. dollar. Conversely, in the US your APC dollars buy more in EUR, GPB, JPY or Canadian dollars today than they did a year ago. A strong currency works in your favour when you are buying (paying for APCs), but to your detriment when you are selling (your prices went up even though you didn’t change them; you are less competitive). This makes budgeting for APCs difficult for libraries, universities, and funders. This is important because libraries, universities and funders generally work within the constraints of fixed budgets. This variation due to currency fluctuations is a disadvantage of international publishing whether based on APCs or subscriptions. Using local services to the greatest extent possible is one way to avoid or minimize the impact of currency fluctuations. This post is part of the open access article processing charges project.

USD vs. other currencies 2014-15

1 USD (2014) 1 USD (2015) % of value loss to the US Dollar
Canadian Dollar 1.09 CAD 1.20 CAD 10%
Japanese yen 101.46 JPY 119.38 JPY 18%
UK pound sterling 0.60 GBP 0.63 GBP 5%
European Euro 0.73 EUR 0.88 EUR 21%

Cite as:

Salhab, J., & Morrison, H. (2015). In the E.U.? Your USD APCs cost 21% more than a year ago. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/20/in-the-e-u-your-usd-apcs-cost-21-more-than-a-year-ago/