Abstract
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.
Highlights
We identified 14,356 Open access (OA) articles and proceeding published by researchers at Pay It Forward (PIF) partner universities between 2009 and 2013 in OA journals that we were able to obtain article processing charges (APCs) prices
While there were two other discipline coding schemes at different levels of specificity in the Web of Science (WoS) that assigned multiple discipline codes for each publication, attempting to use a coding scheme with multiple codes per publication to sort out disciplinary differences in APC prices would have been extremely complex and probably not helpful
The current APC market is concentrated in a few disciplines and there are very few APC funded OA journals that publish in the social sciences and humanities
Summary
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. We identified APC prices for publications by authors at the 4 research intensive United States (US) and Canadian universities involved in the study. We identified 41 journals published by traditionally subscription publishers which have recently converted to APC funded OA and recorded the APCs they charge. 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
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