Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges

"The primary goal of the project was to study how research funders, via their own policy choices, could encourage the development of a transparent, competitive and reasonably priced APC funded OA market. One of the key questions therefore, was how to create mechanisms where funders (and indirectly authors in some scenarios) have to factor in the APC price level against the service provided by the journal in question, thus putting competitive pressure on publishers to lower price.

Thus far, we believe that for full OA journals, author sensitivity to the levels of APCs has been working effectively in creating pressure to moderate the price of APCs. The fact that APCs correlate significantly with journal impact factors is also an indication that not only price but also perceived quality matters.

In contrast, hybrid OA articles are significantly more expensive than their full OA counterparts and the price level is an important factor in inhibiting uptake of the hybrid option. Other factors influencing hybrid uptake include how permissive publishers are for self-archiving in the journals in question; whether publisher or institutional OA mandates push authors into using the hybrid option; and whether the author has access to earmarked funding for paying the hybrid charges. Developing mechanisms by which funders can help to make the hybrid OA market less dysfunctional is a key aspect of this study...."