Article processing charges, altmetrics and citation impact: Is there an economic rationale?

Maddi, Abdelghani; Sapinho, David

doi:10.1007/s11192-022-04284-y

Cited by 22 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…It can be assumed that institutional resources have some effect on research quality (through better infrastructure, higher attractiveness for co-authorships, etc.). Given that there is a moderate link between the perceived quality of journals and the levels of APCs they charge (Demeter & Istratii, 2020;Gray, 2020;Maddi & Sapinho, 2022), this path could account for some of the effects we measure. However, two observations suggest that this might not be a particularly severe issue: first, the correlation between journal prestige (measured via the Impact Factor IF) and APC is only moderate, and further, the IF itself is highly debated as a measure for quality (Archambault & Larivière, 2009;Bar-Ilan, 2008;Larivière & Sugimoto, 2019;Lozano et al, 2012;Waltman, 2016;Waltman & Traag, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The APC-Effect: Stratification in Open Access Publishing

Klebel¹,

Ross-Hellauer²

2022

Preprint

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Current implementations of Open Access (OA) publishing frequently involve Article Publishing Charges (APCs). Increasing evidence emerges that APCs impede researchers with fewer resources in publishing their research OA. We analysed 1.5 million scientific articles from journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals to assess average APCs and their determinants for a comprehensive set of journal publications, across scientific disciplines, world regions and through time. Levels of APCs were strongly stratified by scientific fields and the institutions’ countries, corroborating previous findings on publishing cultures and the impact of mandates of research funders. After controlling for country and scientific field with a multilevel mixture model, however, we found small to moderate effects of levels of institutional resourcing on the level of APCs. This is what we call the APC-Effect. Effects were largest in countries with low GDP, suggesting decreasing marginal effects of institutional resources when general levels of funding are high. Our findings provide further evidence on how APCs stratify OA publishing and highlight the need for alternative publishing models.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The APC-Effect: Stratification in Open Access Publishing

Klebel¹,

Ross-Hellauer²

2022

Preprint

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“…Asai (2020) documented the progressive shift of incumbent publishers from the subscription-based model to the hybrid one (subscription + APC), without any erosion in the market power. Maddi and Sapinho (2022) find that the level of APC fees has been growing much more than costs. And Zhang et al (2022) provided a documented denonciation of the evolution of the publishing industry, showing that the cost of publication and the turnover of incumbent publishers not only were not reduced by the emergence of Open access, but significantly increased.…”

Section: The Myth Of Ex Post Review and The Unintended Consequences O...mentioning

confidence: 97%

Towards peer review as a group engagement

Bonaccorsi

2022

JLIS.it

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I discuss from an economic perspective two of the most recent suggestions to reform the peer review system: (a) payment to referees; (b) ex post peer review. I show that strong economic arguments militate against these ideas. With respect to payment to referees I use results from the economic analysis of prosocial behavior and the private production of public goods, which show that the supply of monetary incentives has the paradoxical effect of reducing the willingness of agents to collaborate, insofar as they substitute intrincic motivation with extrinsic motivation. With respect to ex post peer review, I show that it fails to offer sufficient incentives to researchers, since it is anonymous, depersonalized, and weak in its marginal impact on publishing decisions. I take this argument to criticize the lack of theorizing, in the side of radical proponents of Open access, about the conditions for transition from the subscription model to the Open model. It is this lack of critical attention to economic arguments that has led to the unintended but dramatic outcome of a net increase in the cost of scientific publishing, as documented in very recent papers. Finally, I advance a proposal for admitting payments to referees, but not as individuals but as groups of researchers. I offer this idea to open discussion.

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“…Given that there are statistically signi cant differences between the Publons structure and that of the WoS, we adjusted the Publons sample using the procedure called "raking ratio" 25,26 , which provides adjustment weights. 2), for the calculation method see: 27 .…”

Section: Adjustment Of Publons Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

On The Peer Review Reports: Does Size Matter?

Maddi

Miotti

2023

Preprint

Self Cite

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Scientometers and sociologists of science have spilled much ink on the topic of peer review over the past twenty years given its primordial role in a context marked by the exponential growth of scientific production and the proliferation of predatory journals. Although the topic is addressed under different prisms, few studies have empirically analyzed to what extent it can affect the quality of publications. Here we study (1) the link between the length of reviewers' reports and the citations received by publications, (2) The threshold (expressed in number of words in reviewers' reports) at which the effect on citations becomes statistically significant. To do this, we used data from the Publons database (58,093 peer review reports). We have adjusted this sample to match the WoS database structure. Our regression results show that peer review positively affects the quality of publications. In other words, the more in-depth (longer) the referees' reports are, the greater the publication improvements will be, resulting in an increase in citations received. This result is important from both the point of view of reviewers and that of journal's chiefs-editors. Even if it is not a remunerated activity, it is important that it be more valued at least within the framework of research evaluation exercises, given its positive impact on science. On the thresholds, the results differ between the types of regression used. The threshold is 1250 words (about one page) for Negative Binomial regression, 1400 words for Poisson regression and 2400 words for GLM regression. These results suggest that a report that brings the most value to the publication is a deep report, which naturally requires more time to produce. This is an important result in a context where the deadlines granted to reviewers tend to decrease for some publishers.

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Article processing charges, altmetrics and citation impact: Is there an economic rationale?

Cited by 22 publications

References 36 publications

The APC-Effect: Stratification in Open Access Publishing

The APC-Effect: Stratification in Open Access Publishing

Towards peer review as a group engagement

On The Peer Review Reports: Does Size Matter?

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