scholarly journals The burden of article processing charges on Canadian universities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc-André Simard ◽  
Toluwase Asubiaro ◽  
Philippe Mongeon
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Canadian Universities ◽  
Research Institution ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Web

The question about the cost of access to scholarly resources is usually answered by focusing on subscription cost. This study highlights the article processing charges (APCs) paid by Canada’s research institution as an additional scholarly resource. Unpaywall database was queried with the DOIs of CARL member universities’ publication indexed in the Web of Science. We find that while Open Access should in principle reduce the cost of access to scholarly literature, we are rather in a situation where both the cost of access and the cost of publishing are increasing simultaneously.

scholarly journals Article processing charges for open access publication—the situation for research intensive universities in the USA and Canada

PeerJ ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. e2264 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Solomon ◽  
Bo-Christer Björk
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
European Universities ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Western European ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
The Cost

Background.Open access (OA) publishing via article processing charges (APCs) is growing as an alternative to subscription publishing. The Pay It Forward (PIF) Project is exploring the feasibility of transitioning from paying subscriptions to funding APCs for faculty at research intensive universities. Estimating of the cost of APCs for the journals authors at research intensive universities tend to publish is essential for the PIF project and similar initiatives. This paper presents our research into this question.Methods.We identified APC prices for publications by authors at the 4 research intensive United States (US) and Canadian universities involved in the study. We also obtained APC payment records from several Western European universities and funding agencies. Both data sets were merged with Web of Science (WoS) metadata. We calculated the average APCs for articles and proceedings in 13 discipline categories published by researchers at research intensive universities. We also identified 41 journals published by traditionally subscription publishers which have recently converted to APC funded OA and recorded the APCs they charge.Results.We identified 7,629 payment records from the 4 European APC payment databases and 14,356 OA articles authored by PIF partner university faculty for which we had listed APC prices. APCs for full OA journals published by PIF authors averaged 1,775 USD; full OA journal APCs paid by Western European funders averaged 1,865 USD; hybrid APCs paid by Western European funders averaged 2,887 USD. The APC for converted journals published by major subscription publishers averaged 1,825 USD. APC funded OA is concentrated in the life and basic sciences. APCs funded articles in the social sciences and humanities are often multidisciplinary and published in journals such as PLOS ONE that largely publish in the life sciences.Conclusions.Full OA journal APCs average a little under 2,000 USD while hybrid articles average about 3,000 USD for publications by researchers at research intensive universities. There is a lack of information on discipline differences in APCs due to the concentration of APC funded publications in a few fields and the multidisciplinary nature of research.

The Cost of Publishing

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-171
Author(s):  
Michael Hochberg
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Scientific Publication ◽  
Academic Society ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
The Cost

The cost of publishing is hotly debated. Until the 1990s, publication was either free of charge, paid per page or per article, or covered partially or completely if subscribing to a journal or if a member of the academic society overseeing a journal. A major shift occurred in the early 2000s when new “Open Access” publishers made articles freely available for all to read and reuse, with article processing charges being covered by the author. This chapter discusses the paradigm shift and how it has changed the landscape of who pays for scientific publication.

scholarly journals A Crisis in “Open Access”: Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?

SAGE Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824401987104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan ◽  
Hadi Khaniki ◽  
Abdolhosein Kalantari ◽  
Mehrnoosh Akhtari-Zavare ◽  
Elaheh Farahmand ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Development ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Scientific Publishing ◽  
The World ◽  
Trend Data ◽  
Communication Needs ◽  
The Web

This study diachronically investigates the trend of the “open access” in the Web of Science (WoS) category of “communication.” To evaluate the trend, data were collected from 184 categories of WoS from 1980 to 2017. A total of 87,997,893 documents were obtained, of which 95,304 (0.10%) were in the category of “communication.” In average, 4.24% of the documents in all 184 categories were open access. While in communication, it was 3.29%, which ranked communication 116 out of 184. An Open Access Index (OAI) was developed to predict the trend of open access in communication. Based on the OAI, communication needs 77 years to fully reach open access, which undeniably can be considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” in this field. Given this stunning information, it is the time for a global call for “open access” by communication scholars across the world. Future research should investigate whether the current business models of publications in communication scholarships are encouraging open access or pose unnecessary restrictions on knowledge development.

scholarly journals The cost-effectiveness of the article-processing-charge-funded model across countries in different scientific blocks: the case of Elsevier's hybrid open access journals

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zohreh Estakhr ◽  
Hajar Sotudeh ◽  
Javad Abbaspour ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Article Processing Charge ◽  
Publishing Article ◽  
Open Access Journals ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Citation Advantage

Introduction. The present study investigated the cost-effectiveness of article-processing-charge-funded model across the world countries in terms of its citation value proportional to the article processing charges. Method. Using a comparative citation analysis method at the macro level, it explored a sample of articles in forty-seven Elsevier hybrid open access journals that had been following the model since 2007. Analysis. The contributing countries' open access citation advantages were calculated based on the percentage of their open access citation surplus proportional to that of their non-open access articles. Their relative open access citation cost-effectiveness was obtained based on their open access citation counts proportional to the article processing charges, normalised by those of non-open access papers. The countries were categorised into four scientific blocks using Rand's categorization of countries' scientific development. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data in SPSS. Results. The results supported the citation advantage of the article-processing-charge-funded papers, encompassing the majority of the contributing countries in the four scientific development blocks. The articles showed relative cost-effectiveness over the years and for most countries in all the scientific development blocks. Conclusions. Publishing article-processing-charge-funded papers is relatively cost-effective, implying higher visibility and influence in exchange for the money paid.

scholarly journals Twenty-five Years of Journal of Universal Computer Science: A Bibliometric Overview

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-39
Author(s):  
Nelson Baloian ◽  
José A. Pino ◽  
Gustavo Zurita ◽  
Valeria Lobos-Ossandón ◽  
Hermann Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Core Collection ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Scientific Journal ◽  
Vos Viewer ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
International Diversity ◽  
The Web

The Journal of Universal Computer Science is a monthly peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal covering all aspects of computer science, launched in 1994, so becoming twenty-five years old in 2019. In order to celebrate its anniversary, this study presents a bibliometric overview of the leading publication and citation trends occurring in the journal. The aim of the work is to identify the most relevant authors, institutions, countries, and analyze their evolution through time. The article uses the Web of Science Core Collection citations and the ACM Computing Classification System in order to search for the bibliographic information. Our study also develops a graphical mapping of the bibliometric material by using the visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer. With this software, the work analyzes bibliographic coupling, citation and co-citation analysis, co-authorship, and co-occurrence of keywords. The results underline the significant growth of the journal through time and its international diversity having publications from countries all over the world and covering a wide range of categories which confirms the “universal” character of the journal.

scholarly journals The Potential of a Cost-Per-Use Analysis to Assess the Value of Library Open-Access Funds

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 99-101
Author(s):  
Jessica Koos
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Biomed Central ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Article Usage ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Design Cost ◽  
The Impact

A Review of: Hampson, C., & Stregger, E. (2017). Measuring cost per use of library-funded open access article processing charges: Examination and implications of one method. Journal of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication, 5(1), eP2182. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2182 Abstract Objective – To determine the feasibility and potential effects of a cost-per-use analysis of library funds dedicated to open access. Design – Cost-per-use analysis, case study. Setting – PLOS and BioMed Central. Subjects – 591 articles published in PLOS ONE, 165 articles published in PLOS Biology, and 17 articles published in BioMed Central. Methods – Three specific examples are provided of how academic libraries can employ a cost-per-use analysis in order to determine the impact of library-based open access (OA) funds. This method is modeled after the traditional cost-per-use method of analyzing a library collection, and facilitates comparison to other non-OA items. The first example consisted of using a formula dividing the total library-funded article processing charges (APCs) by the total global use of the specific PLOS journal articles that were funded. The second and third examples demonstrated what a library-funded OA membership to BioMed Central would cost alone, and then with APCs that cost could be divided by the total usage of the funded articles to determine cost-per-use. Main Results – The authors found both of the examples described in the article to be potential ways of determining cost-per-use of OA articles, with some limitations. For instance, counting article usage through the publisher’s website may not capture the true usage of an article, as it does not take altmetrics into consideration. In addition, article-level data is not always readily available. In addition, the cost-per-use of OA articles was found to be very low, ranging from $0.01 to $1.51 after the first three years of publication based on the cost of library-funded APCs. The second and third methods revealed a cost-per-use of $0.10 using membership-only payments, while using the cost of membership plus APCs resulted in a cost-per-use of $0.41. Conclusion – Libraries may wish to consider using these methods for demonstrating the value of OA funds in terms of return on investment, as these techniques allow for direct comparison to the usage of traditional journals. However, several barriers need to be overcome in how article-level usage is obtained in order for these methods to be more accurate and efficient. In addition, while the authors report that "The specific examples in this study suggest that OA APCs may compare favorably to traditional publishing when considering value for money based on cost per use," they also caution that the study was not designed to answer the question if the ROI is greater for OA publications than for traditional articles, stating that "...the data in this study should not be interpreted as a verification of such an argument, as this study was not designed to answer that question, nor can it do so given the limitations on the data. This paper was designed to present and illustrate a method. Further study would be necessary to verify or refute this possibility" (p. 15).

scholarly journals Modeling and Prediction of the Impact Factor of Journals Using Open-Access Databases

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 35-58
Author(s):  
Matthias Templ
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Impact Factor ◽  
Journal Impact Factor ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Functional Relationships ◽  
Modeling And Prediction ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Journal Impact ◽  
The Web

This article is motivated by the work as editor-in-chief of the Austrian Journal of Statistics and contains detailed analyses about the impact of the Austrian Journal of Statistics. The impact of a journal is typically expressed by journal metrics indicators. One of the important ones, the journal impact factor is calculated from the Web of Science (WoS) database by Clarivate Analytics. It is known that newly established journals or journals without membership in big publishers often face difficulties to be included, e.g., in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and thus they do not receive a WoS journal impact factor, as it is the case for example, for the Austrian Journal of Statistics. In this study, a novel approach is pursued modeling and predicting the WoS impact factor of journals using open access or partly open-access databases, like Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and Scopus. I hypothesize a functional linear dependency between citation counts in these databases and the journal impact factor. These functional relationships enable the development of a model that may allow estimating the impact factor for new, small, and independent journals not listed in SCI. However, only good results could be achieved with robust linear regression and well-chosen models. In addition, this study demonstrates that the WoS impact factor of SCI listed journals can be successfully estimated without using the Web of Science database and therefore the dependency of researchers and institutions to this popular database can be minimized. These results suggest that the statistical model developed here can be well applied to predict the WoS impact factor using alternative open-access databases. 

scholarly journals Exploring the relationship between journal indexing and article processing charges of journals published by MDPI, the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Okagbue ◽  
Jaime Teixeira da Silva ◽  
Timothy Anake
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Impact Factor ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Digital Publishing ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
The Relationship

The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) is a prominent open access (OA) publisher that uses article processing charges (APCs) as its business model. Our objective was to determine the association between the APCs levied by MDPI journals and 1) their inclusion in Scopus and Web of Science databases or 2) their stature, as represented by their CiteScore (Elsevier&rsquo;s Scopus) and Impact Factor (awarded by Clarivate Analytics). Among the 227 journals published by MDPI, 51 had both IF and CiteScore; 107, only a CiteScore; and 84, neither IF nor CiteScore. The charges levied by the journals varied widely, from 0 to CHF 2000 (Swiss francs), the most frequent figure (159 journals) being CHF 1000, or about &euro;930. The amount of APCs was found to be correlated to IF (R&sup2; = 0.64; p <0.001; 107 journals) and also to CiteScore (R&sup2; = 0.619; p <0.001; 53 journals). The charges levied by journals that had both IF and CiteScore were significantly higher than those charged by journals with neither IF nor CiteScore (p <0.05). The charges were also correlated to the age of the journal: the more recently launched journals charged less than the older journals did.

scholarly journals Three new suggested guidelines for increased transparency regarding open access article processing charges (APCs)

2020 ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Article Processing Charge ◽  
Wide Debate ◽  
Financial Transparency ◽  
Article Processing Charges ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Gold Open Access ◽  
Open Access Article

The article processing charge (APC) lies at the heart of the gold open access (GOA) business model. Small and larger society-based, as well as commercial publishers, rely – to different extents – on the APC and the GOA model to thrive. There is wide debate regarding what amount of APC is considered to be exploitative, and the issue of low APCs is often erroneously associated with “predatory” OA publishing. Independent of this debate, there is still, surprisingly, considerable opacity related to the APC used to cover the cost of  GOA. In a bid to increase transparency, a simple 3-point plan at increasing academic and financial transparency of authors and journals/publishers regarding APCs is proposed: 1) indicate which author paid the APC in multi-author papers; 2) indicate the value of the APC paid; 3) provide online proof or certification of APC payment, including the indication of any discounts or waivers.

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