The last few years have seen a significant rise in what are termed ‘hybrid open access journals’, where only some of the articles are freely available to read and a subscription is still required to read the remainder. As many journals require payment from authors to publish in this fashion, then university libraries need to pay subscriptions to read the remaining articles, publishers are in effect being paid twice for the same work.
With recently published data from the Wellcome Trust, the scale of this double charging has become much more clear.
In Oct 2012 – Sept 2013, academics spent £3.88 million to publish articles in journals with immediate online access – of which £3.17 million (82 % of costs, 74 % of papers) was paying for publications that Universities would then be charged again for. For perspective, this is a figure slightly larger than the Wellcome Trust paid in 2012/2013 on their Society & Ethics portfolio.
Only £0.70 million of the charity’s £3.88m didn’t have any form of double charging (ie, was published in a “Pure Open Access” journal) – with this total being dominated by articles published in PLOS and BioMed Central journals (68 % of total ‘pure’ hybrid journal costs, 80 % of paper total).
Top 5 publishers by total cost to Wellcome Trust
|
Publisher |
No. of articles |
Maximum Cost |
Average Cost |
Total Cost (nearest £1000) |
|
Elsevier (inc. Cell Press) |
418 |
£5,760 |
£2,448.158 |
£1,036,000 |
|
Wiley-Blackwell |
271 |
£3,078.92 |
£2,009.632 |
£545,000 |
|
PLOS |
307 |
£3,600 |
£1,139.286 |
£350,000 |
|
Oxford University Press |
167 |
£3,177.60 |
£1,850.099 |
£300,000 |
|
Nature Publishing Group (not inc. Frontiers) |
80 |
£3,780 |
£2,696.396 |
£216,000 |
Top 5 publishers by total cost to Wellcome Trust – separated into money spent on author charges for articles appearing in hybrid and pure open access journals
|
Publisher |
Journal Type |
No. of articles |
Max Cost |
Average Cost |
Total Cost (nearest £) |
|
Elsevier |
Hybrid |
402 |
£5,760 |
2,443.28 |
£982,199 |
|
Pure OA |
21 |
£3,996 |
2,541.48 |
£53,371 |
|
|
Wiley-Blackwell |
Hybrid |
263 |
£3,026 |
2,010.88 |
£528,862 |
|
Pure OA |
8 |
£3,079 |
1,968.60 |
£15,749 |
|
|
PLOS |
Hybrid |
0 |
£0 |
£0 |
£0 |
|
Pure OA |
307 |
£3,600 |
1,139.29 |
£349,761 |
|
|
Oxford University Press |
Hybrid |
135 |
£3,177.6 |
2,004.14 |
£270,558 |
|
Pure OA |
32 |
£2,184 |
1,200.25 |
£38,408 |
|
|
Nature Publishing Group |
Hybrid |
67 |
£3,780 |
2,867.82 |
192,143.71 |
|
Pure OA |
13 |
£2,880 |
1,812.923 |
23,568 |
Wellcome Trust pays nearly £1 million to Elsevier, and pays over £500,000 to Wiley-Blackwell to make articles freely available on point of publication, in journals that a university library will also be trying to find money to also pay subscription fees to. These are outrageously high sums of money! Especially given a recent explosion in the number of journals, and an increase in journal prices, means even well-funded libraries can no longer afford the cost of subscribing to many journals!
Journal articles should be published in a way that means they are freely available – and not just to academics, but also to wider public audiences. And I’m not critical of article processing charges. However, I’m unsure how any publisher can justify charging an academic an average cost of £2,443 to publish in a journal that is already being supported by library subscriptions from not just one university, but many universities around the world. And surely no cost based model should charge more for publication in a hybrid journal with multiple funding streams than in one supported purely on author charges (as appears to be the case with Wiley-Blackwell).
Data
Data source found here
Original data: Kiley, Robert (2014): Wellcome Trust APC spend 2012-13: data file. figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.963054
Enhancements on original data made by Cameron Neylon: https://github.com/cameronneylon/apcs
Quantumplations 
Reblogged this on sonofbluerobot and commented:
#openjournalism #opendata
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