Thanks to Xenia van Edig (of Copernicus) and Dirk Pieper for providing new substantive evidence. Following are highlights of my update. New blog post title: Copernicus 2015-2016 comparison
Update July 6, 2016: I retract my statement on tripling of page charges thanks to new evidence indicating that the difference reflects a change in the stage at which papers are assessed (now final publication stage generally one-third the pages of discussion paper stage). The change is intended to be revenue-neutral but more data from APC payers would be needed to confirm this. 2015 data from the Open APC project includes values for 2 journals with papers at both stages, and prices paid are 17-24% higher for papers at the final publication stage. I re-affirm my assessment of the volatility of the APC market. I found 6 journals with APCs indicated "currently waived", presumably journals that will charge APCs of unknown quantities in future. I found 4 journals that referred to APCs without specifying the cost and 2 journals with no indication of whether or not there is a cost. This is a very substantial percentage of Copernicus' journals for which the answer to the questions "is there an APC or APPC, and if so, how much is it?" is not available on the Copernicus' website. I regard Copernicus as a model OA publisher. It is likely that this situation reflects journals that would rather not charge APCs, feel they must charge APCs but are not sure how much to charge, etc., rather than deliberate obfuscation. Clarification for the GOAL list: the OA APC project is a longitudinal study of APC prices intended to be inclusive of all publishers with APCs, or at least all that are or have been included in DOAJ at some point in time. The purpose is to watch for early signs of trends to assist in ensuring that transition to OA is sustainable. A premature push for global universal funding of OA via APC based on data likely to undergo significant shifts in the next few years risks global failure and potential burn-out of some of OA’s best friends and supporters. No journal or publisher is targeted or an enemy. The Sustaining the Knowledge Commons blog includes a number of case studies. I/we publish these whenever we notice something different or interesting and someone has time to write a post. Critique is a necessary part of advancing our knowledge. best, Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ heather.morri...@uottawa.ca _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
