Three different traits of open access publishers

This week I’ve been compiling some data for the next meeting of the RLUK Ethical and Effective Publishing Working Group. Some of the data itself is pretty interesting so I thought I would write a quick blog post and share some preliminary thoughts on what it means. The table below shows the top 5 publishers in terms of money spent on article processing charges (APCs) from the RCUK open access block grant in 2013-14.

Publisher Total spend No. of APCs Average APC Discount on list price
Elsevier £52,596 36 £1,461.00 25%
Wiley £51,781 35 £1,479.46 25%
Public Library of Science (PLOS) £23,737 24 £989.04 0%
Nature Pub Group (NPG) £21,226 8 £2,653.25 0%
BioMed Central (BMC) £20,746 16 £1,296.63 15%

Article processing charges (APC) for the most popular journals for Edinburgh authors.

We found that 2 publishers stood head and shoulders clear from the rest of the field. In terms of gross spend and number of articles published the top publisher was Elsevier, with £52.6k and 36 articles. In second place, with a similar publisher profile was Wiley with £51.8k and 35 articles. Both of these publishers were followed by PLOS, NPG and BMC who all had broadly similar spends of around £20k. Whilst the total cost per publisher is interesting, what is really noteworthy is the number of articles that money pays for, revealing something of the publisher’s strategy in the open access market place.

The lowest APCs are incurred from the open access journals – PLOS and BMC – who have fees roughly a third less than the other publishers. The highest APCs are incurred by hybrid journals, who also make money from subscriptions, and article reprints. NPG stand out from the crowd as they charge nearly double compared to their competitors.

In summary, what we see here are broadly 3 groups of publishers with different traits:

Money Makers – traditional publishers with the biggest market share, the highest number of articles published, APC set to the highest they think market can bear without losing submissions, initially offering biggest discounts for institutional deals to get sign ups (and easier access to authors).

Prestige reputation – traditional publishers trading on their reputational status. Significantly less articles published but with larger APCs levied to publish in the journals with the highest impact factors. Strategy of selling high end products and services to those that can afford them.

Emerging challengers – new business model and products, more reasonable APCs to attract a market share. However, it is worth noting that since being bought out by Springer, BMC have attracted criticism for raising APCs much quicker than the rate of inflation.

When we get round to submitting the final RCUK report we’ll release our full dataset of article processing charges.

[Minor edits made to original to correct grammar, headings and stylesheet]

University of Edinburgh Open Access update: April 2014

Green Open Access

As of 30th April there are approximately 78,340 records in our Current Research Information System (PURE), of which 18,321 have open access documents available to the general public (23% open access).

Looking specifically at just journal articles and conference proceedings:

OA full text/Record only (all time) Open access % OA full text/Record only (2013+) Open access %
Medicine & Veterinary Medicine 6,712/19,998  34  1,023/2,212  46
Humanities & Social Science 3,459/13,571  26  577/1,119  51
Science & Engineering 5,915 /26,009  23  841/2,049  41

 

Gold Open Access

Monthly application figures to the Gold Open Access funds:

Month Applications to RCUK Applications to Wellcome
January 2014 32 13
February 2014 24 13
March 2014 23 14
April 2014 35 5

Status of the Wellcome fund – since the start of the new reporting period (November 2013) the cumulative open access spend has been £152,826

Status of the RCUK fund – current cumulative spend for the current reporting period (since April 2013) is £393,480 with an additional £65,500 committed on articles submitted for publication.

University of Edinburgh Open Access update: Feb 2014

As of 27th Jan there are approximately 75,700 records in our Current Research Information System (PURE), of which 15,486 have open access documents available to the general public (20% open access). In addition there are 71 records with documents waiting for validation.

Looking specifically at just journal articles and conference proceedings:

  All time OA docs Open access % 2008 onwards OA docs Open access %
Medicine & Veterinary Medicine 6450 26 4537 32
Humanities & Social Science 2667 19 2239 32
Science & Engineering 5514 22 3688 30

Monthly application figures to the Gold Open Access funds:

Month Applications to RCUK Applications to Wellcome
October 2013 23
November 2013 27 20
December 2013 19 9
January 2014 32 13
February 2014 24 13

Status of the RCUK fund – currently there is £327,222 left in the fund, with an additional £65,011 committed on articles submitted for publication. Altogether the fund has 39% left in the account.

Status of the Wellcome fundsince the start of the new reporting period (November 2013) the cumulative open access spend has been £108,372