Demystifying Scholarly Metrics: a Practical Guide by Vinyard Marc W.;Colvin Jaimie Beth;

Author:Vinyard, Marc W.;Colvin, Jaimie Beth;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, LLC

THE BAD

We will cover some of the complications authors encounter when they are attempting to publish articles in OA articles as well as issues that hinder efforts to increase the number of OA articles.

Article-Processing Charges (APCs)

It’s easy to think of OA as being free when you visit a publisher’s website and download articles for free. However, regardless of whether a journal publisher charges for users to read its articles, there are costs involved in publishing articles such as editing, typesetting, organizing them on a website, and server hosting.

Some OA publishers cover their labor and technology costs by charging authors an APC. Just how many OA journals charge APCs? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Researcher Walt Crawford (2019) conducted an exhaustive survey of 12,180 gold OA journals and determined that as of 2018, 30% of gold OA journals have APCs (3,506 titles). In addition, he determined that the average APC was $913. A major caveat to Crawford’s (2019) findings is that hybrid journals weren’t included. While it’s trickier to track hybrid journals, their exclusion paints an incomplete picture of the APC landscape. In 2015, David Crotty wrote a blog entry that included rough estimates of the number of hybrid journals that he calculated by visiting the websites of major journal publishers. We are replicating his methodology by listing the number of hybrid journals as of June 2020 with more updated figures:

• Elsevier: 2,340 titles

• Springer: 2,058

• Wiley: 1,484

• Emerald: 263 (from Cabell’s Journalytics)

• Cambridge University Press: 335

• SAGE: 906

• Oxford University Press: Exact numbers weren’t provided, but the majority of the 450 titles provide hybrid OA for a conservative estimate of the 300 titles.

• Taylor & Francis: 2,300

This estimate provides an additional 9,986 journals with APCs, which surpasses Crotty’s (2015) total of 6,634 titles from 2015. The actual number is definitely higher, but it’s beyond the scope of this discussion to provide a comprehensive figure for hybrid journals. If we add 9,986 titles to Crawford’s list of 12,180 titles, we can estimate that a minimum of 61% of OA journals have APCs.

This distinction between hybrid and gold OA journals is important for two reasons. On average, hybrid journals have considerably higher APCs than gold OA journals. We obtained average APCs for hybrid journals by consulting the publishers’ websites. In some cases, we downloaded lists in Excel and generated averages. Table 5.1 compares the average hybrid and gold APCs for the major publishers.

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