A “Gold‐centric” implementation of open access: Hybrid journals, the “Total cost of publication,” and policy development in the UK and beyond

Abstract

This paper reports analysis of data from higher education institutions in the UK on their experience of the open‐access (OA) publishing market working within a policy environment favoring “Gold” OA (OA publishing in journals). It models the “total cost of publication”—comprising costs of journal subscriptions, OA article‐processing charges (APCs), and new administrative costs—for a sample of 24 institutions. APCs are shown to constitute 12% of the “total cost of publication,” APC administration, 1%, and subscriptions, 87% (for a sample of seven publishers). APC expenditure in institutions rose between 2012 and 2014 at the same time as rising subscription costs. There was disproportionately high take up of Gold options for Health and Life Sciences articles. APC prices paid varied widely, with a mean APC of £1,586 in 2014. “Hybrid” options (subscription journals also offering OA for individual articles on payment of an APC) were considerably more expensive than fully OA titles, but the data indicate a correlation between APC price and journal quality (as reflected in the citation rates of journals). The policy implications of these developments are explored, particularly in relation to hybrid OA and potential of offsetting subscription and APC costs.

A report on the future of independent and scholarly publishing webinar by the Scholarly Kitchen

“…Over the years, publishers have worked to comply with changing requirements. As an example, since 2014, AMS has offered a gold OA option in the form of equivalents of Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society and Transactions of the American Mathematical Society (identified as series B ) in response to funder mandates (Pinfield, Salter, & Bath, ). Under Plan S, however, those titles were ruled to be mirror journals and not compliant (‘Principles and Implementation | Plan S’, ).…”

The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access

“…It has also been shown the Article Processing Charge (APC) market is included in this, with many highlighting the disparity between APC price levels, and in particular the trend of higher costs of hybrid than pure-gold journals [8,67]. Another economic factor which has been mentioned frequently is 'double-dipping'-paying twice for journal content through subscriptions and APCs [13,68]-a particular concern in the UK because of funders' willingness to pay APCs for hybrid journals [10].…”

“…UK uptake of gold OA has, however, been dominated by hybrids, and the payment of APCs involved has led to an increase in overall costs for UK HEIs. Although some offsetting arrangements (adjusting subscription and APC prices in relation to each other) have been put in place by some publishers, both APC costs and subscription costs have continued to rise in parallel, in addition to new administrative costs experienced by institutions [9,10]. At the same time, deposits in repositories have also risen, but a large number of these are not made available in an OA form immediately since they are subject to embargoes.…”

Open-access mega-journals

“…APCs typically range from US$195 to US$1,950 and generally cluster around the US$1,300 mark (Björk, 2015;Björk and Solomon, 2014). This is considerably cheaper than other APCs, particularly those of hybrid subscription-OA journals (Björk and Solomon, 2014;Pinfield et al, 2015Pinfield et al, , 2017. To place mega-journals' fees in context, their average APC fee of US$1,300 is more than the average APC for fully OA journals, in the region of US$900, but substantially less than that of top ranking fully OA journals (ranging from US$2,500 to US$5,000), or hybrid journals (US$3,000) (Solomon and Björk, 2012).…”