by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Update May 1, 2019:

Based on an inquiry from Christopher Pym from Springer Nature (owner of BioMedCentral) on the Global Open Access List I (Heather) have re-calculated the observed BMC pricing changes from 2018 – 2019, in GBP rather than USD. BMC reports pricing in 3 currencies (a common practice for large publishers). We use GBP for historical purposes. In brief, this re-analysis confirms our original finding of a sharp increase in APCs. 66% of BMC journals for which we have APC data in GBP for both 2018 and 2019 have increased their APCs; 61% have increased their APCs at far beyond inflationary levels, causing the overall average (including journals that did not change APCs or lowered APCs) to increase by 15%, a rate far beyond inflationary levels. We thank Christopher Pym for his interest in our research.

We have APC data for both 2018 and 2019 for 260 BMC journals. The average APC for these journals was 1,416 GBP in 2018, 1,555 GBP in 2019, an average increase of 139 GBP or an average 9% increase. The pricing changes are more complex, however, as some BMC journals have maintained or lowered their prices. In USD (using XE currency converter May 1, 2019), the average APC for these journals rose from 1,852 USD to 2,034 USD, an increase of 181 USD (note rounding error of $1).

Of the 260 BMC journals for which we have 2018 and 2018 APCs:

• 172 (66%) increased in price
• 55 (21%) maintained the same price
• 33 (13%) decreased in price

Of the journals that increased in price, the range of percentage increase was from under 1% to 55%. 158 journals (61% of all journals) had APC price increases clearly beyond inflationary levels, ranging from 7% – 55%.

Because of this challenge, I have re-downloaded the BMC APC list from https://www.biomedcentral.com/getpublished/article-processing-charges/biomedcentral-prices and checked GBP pricing for several journals, finding no difference from our data gathering date of April 4.

On the basis of this selective re-analysis of 260 BMC journals for which we have price data I conclude that the average APC price increase for BMC journals is 15%, (factoring in journals that did not change APC or lowered APC), a rate far above inflation, and that the majority of BMC journals (61%) increased their APCs. This confirms our original findings of a sharp APC increase for BMC in 2019. Please note that this re-analysis using the same basic dataset but slightly different methods. The re-analysis is limited to journals for which we have data in both 2018 and 2019, and is limited to GBP. When new journals and journals no longer published by BMC are factored in, this changes the averages; there can also be differences in findings based on which currency is selected for analysis.

A list of BMC APCs in GBP in 2018 and 2019 follows, in order by percentage change (highest price increase first).

Our recent analysis of BioMed Central publishing company journals reveals a sharp increase both in number of open access journals and also article processing fees.

BMC currently publishes 330 open access journals that comparing to 2018 data shows an increase of 11% in number of journals. While 25 journals have no article processing fee for authors to publish their articles, there has been a 57% increase in average article processing charge comparing to the last year, as the average processing fee was $1402 in 2018 and now it is $2200.

Comparing to the last year, 264 journals have increased and 5 journals have decreased in APC (article processing charge). The average APC increase for journals is $917 and the average decrease is $124.

The raw data for BMC in 2019 is provided below:

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Cite as:

Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2019). BioMed Central in 2019: Sharp increase in article processing charge. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/04/30/biomed-central-in-2019-sharp-increase-in-article-processing-charge/