Widlyne Brutus & I have published a blogpost that attempts to quickly explain the complexities of understanding traditional and open access publishing, OA APCs and trends in pricing.
In brief, Medknow is an emerging commercial publisher from a developing country (India) owned by a long-standing, very traditional western-based publisher (Wolters Kluwer). More than half of Medknow's journals are published in partnership with not-for-profit learned societies and universities. This is a good illustration of a tendency we are noticing in our APC research, that the difference between "traditional" and "open access" publishers is not as clear-cut today as it might have been even a year or two ago. An apparent decrease in average APC, if measured in USD, is likely an anomaly reflecting currency fluctuations as most Medknow journals do not use USD as their primary currency. This complexity might help to explain why some Medknow journals charge APCs, while others do not or do not provide clear information on whether or not there is an APC. From 2015 to 2016, most journals with APCs retained the same price, while some journals are adding APCs, others dropping APCs, a few are lowering their price, but a sizeable number are increasing their prices, some by quite substantial amounts, even more than doubling in price. For details and a table indicating the APC journals with price increases, see: https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/10/11/medknow-2016-its-complicated/ 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 Sustaining the Knowledge Commons: Open Access Scholarship http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html heather.morri...@uottawa.ca<mailto:heather.morri...@uottawa.ca>
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