Comparison of Article Processing Fees on Open Access Journals with a 4.5-Year History of Publishing

Abstract

Open access article (synonym: open access publication) is a type of peer-reviewed article which gives a possibility to the readers to read and download it free of charge owing to paying an open access publication fee (OAPF) directly by its authors, their institutions, or funders.1 According to Solomon and Björk`s study, who analyzed about 1,370 journals, article processing charges range from 8 to 3,900 US Dollars.1, 2 Moreover, the official Elsevier`s page dedicated to the list of all company`s open access journals indicated that an article processing charge can reach 6,000 US Dollars excluding tax.3 First publishing houses that supported and develop open access journals have been two new academic publishers – BioMed Central (BMC) and Public Library of Science (PLoS).1 In 2000, they began establishing journals that rely on open access publication fee.1 Most motivation criteria for the authors from the fields of oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontics in choosing to what peer-reviewed journal submit their paper may be classified under three chief groups: 1) indexing and abstracting in different recognized data bases (PubMed/Medline,4 Scopus, Web of Science, etc.), 2) an impact metric,5 and 3) an amount of the article processing charge. First two motivation criteria are precisely described in recent publications but the last one – open access publication fee and its amount – should be investigated more scrupulously.4, 5 There is a great need to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of OAPF both for authors and editorial staff/publishers. This is the aim of this study in order to understand the advantages and disadvantages the payment methods. For the purpose of comparative analysis we selected two peer-reviewed journals according to the following inclusion criteria: 1. Fully open access publication (hybrid or delayed open access journals were excluded during selection). 2. Similar term of publication history – about 5 years (similar starting point allows comparing the peer-reviewed journals more precisely). 3. Journals focused on oral surgery. 4. Different ways of receiving article processing charges after the submission of manuscripts. 5. English, as language of publications. Analysis was performed on the publishing statistics, abstracting and indexation of the journals as important characteristics of the ways of growth of both peer-reviewed publications.

Gold Open Access Journal Focused on Head and Neck Surgery: Analysis of Business Model and Level of Article Processing Charges during the First 31 Months of Publishing

“…15 Analysis of a 2.5-year publishing history of gold open-access publication focused on head neck surgery cases gave us an example what number of attracted articles, estimated revenue and profit margin can be reached in case of the OCR journal's conditions. Despite the fact that the OCR's editorial board is 6 persons less (Table 4) than the editorial board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Cases journal (17 persons in editorial board), 17,4 the OCR during first 31 month published 117 papers comparing to total 38 articles of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Cases (OMSC) during first 33 months. This is confirmed by the 3.07 times higher result of OCR journal in number of published manuscripts.…”

“…The OCR is analyzed from the first to the eleventh volume. Received data have been compared with publication history results of another gold OA journal Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Cases described in study of Robles Cantero et al 4…”

“…Comparison of Two Gold Open Access Journals: Otolaryngology Case Reports and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Cases 4. …”