Falling Dollar, Rising Prices

"Each year we survey the list Article Processing Charges (APCs) of more than 30 major and significant publishers. Going back to 2015, the dataset includes more than 20,000 unique titles and 150,000 title per year combinations. We have previously seen how headline prices typically increase each year, but mostly fall in real terms, once inflation is accounted for.

After our most recent analysis, we were asked by a US-based institution whether our inflation numbers included currency effects. With the US dollar (USD) having weakened over the last few months, the institution found buying services priced in non-USD currencies to be significantly more expensive by the end of April 2025 compared with the start of the year.

We take a snapshot of APCs at the same time each year. To compare like-for-like across our global market, we normalize prices to USD. This practice is commonly used by economists when analyzing global data and happens to be the most commonly used currency in our sample. Many non-US publishers – especially larger ones – offer an option of USD prices alongside their native currencies (and perhaps others). So, we sample USD prices where quoted, which cover on average around 94% of our annual samples of around 15,000 journals. Otherwise, we convert the prices cited in the publisher’s native currency into USD using the average exchange rate the most recent full year available...."