Gold Open Access output and expenditures in the United States in the past decade

Open access publishing has quite a significant cost associated with it. Article Processing Charges (APCs) are fees charged by publishers to authors for the publication of their articles in open access journals. These fees can present a new type of “paywall” to researchers and institutions who cannot afford to pay these amounts. Considering previous studies that showed barriers to publishing open access between countries as a result of high costs, in this study, we aimed to examine whether there are differences in open access publishing, expenditure and overall participation within universities in the United States. Our analysis shows that the majority of states published between 1,000 – 7,000 Gold Open Access publications and spent up to 6million dollars in the past 10 years. However, there are some noteworthy outliers’ states that publish a high number Gold Open Access papers but pay significantly less than other states that publish a lower number of Gold Open Access papers and pay significantly more.