Hi all,
An interesting discussion. My perspective is not a moral one. The APC
charged should as far as possible reflect the quality and services of
the journal. The current full OA market (for APC journals) is a
relatively competive microeconomic market where customers(=authors)
decide where to submit in a situation where they usually have several
journals (some OA, most not ) to choose from. Quite in contrast to the
oligopolistic subscription market or the strange hybrid OA market. So if
BMC have in fact managed to establish their better journals as high
quality outlets there is no problem in rising prices. The authors
dedice. I don't think the UK funders decisions have yet had much impact
on the funding.
I've personally paid APCs (or my department) for two articles in PLoS
and two in BMC journals nd I've found the benefit/cost ratio to be
excellent in all cases. In contrast I've made several grave mistakes in
the choice of where to submit to in subscription journals. Those
journals don't charge but there are high opportunity costs in delayed
publication, low visibility etc.
As to the question of rising costs due to higher rejection rates I find
this to be a largely unsubstantiated claim. The IT infra is already paid
for, copy editing and invoicing costs only depend on the published
papers. Almost all of the costs of desk rejected manuscripts and
manuscripts rejected after long review processes are born by unpaid
academic editors and reviewers, that is the global scholarly community.
Best regards
Bo-Christer
On 2/28/14 3:50 PM, Heather Morrison wrote:
hi Jan,
Good question! No, I have not looked into whether BMC's rejection
rates have increased.
Whether this would be an acceptable reason for increasing prices at
all, or at a particular rate, is a different question.
For example, unlike a print-based journal with size constraints
imposed by the need to bundle articles into mailable issues, an online
open access journal can easily increase in scale with more
submissions. PLOS ONE has demonstrated the potential for translating
rapid growth in submissions to rapid journal growth, with no price
increase, technological innovations, and a more than healthy surplus.
Best,
Heather Morrison
On Feb 28, 2014, at 7:08 AM, "Frantsvåg Jan Erik"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Interesting numbers!
Have you investigated if some of this increase could be explained by
an increased rejection rate? -- this would be an acceptable
explanation, in my opinion.
The suspicion is, of course, that this could be one result of e.g.
the RCUK OA policy, which creates a less competitive market and
better conditions for generating super-profits.
I think it was Guédon who asked why currency fluctuations always led
to price increases ... J
Best,
Jan Erik
Jan Erik Frantsvåg
Open Access adviser
The University Library of Tromsø
phone +47 77 64 49 50
e-mail [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://en.uit.no/ansatte/organisasjon/ansatte/person?p_document_id=43618&p_dimension_id=88187
Publications: http://tinyurl.com/6rycjns
*Fra:*[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]] *På vegne av* Heather Morrison
*Sendt:* 28. februar 2014 00:54
*Til:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
*Emne:* [GOAL] The dramatic growth of BioMedCentral's open access
article processing charges
Thanks to the University of Ottawa's open sharing of their author
fund data, I've been able to calculate that over the past few years
there is evidence that BMC is raising prices at rates far beyond
inflation (and far beyond what could be accounted for through
currency fluctuations).
Details are posted here:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-dramatic-growth-of-biomedcentral.html
Note that this data reflects BMC practices and cannot be generalized
to open access publishing as a whole. Public Library of Science, for
example, has achieved a 23% surplus in the same time frame without
increasing their OA article processing charges at all.
best,
--
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa
Desmarais 111-02
613-562-5800 ext. 7634
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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