Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity: An Open Access Sequel to the Serials Crisis | LIBER Quarterly

flavoursofopenscience's bookmarks 2019-05-10

Summary:

Author:

Shaun Yon-Seng Khoo

Abstract

Open access publishing has frequently been proposed as a solution to the serials crisis, which involved unsustainable budgetary pressures on libraries due to hyperinflation of subscription costs. The majority of open access articles are published in a minority of journals that levy article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors or their institutions upon acceptance. Increases in APCs is proceeding at a rate three times that which would be expected if APCs were indexed according to inflation. As increasingly ambitious funder mandates are proposed, such as Plan S, it is important to evaluate whether authors show signs of price sensitivity in journal selection by avoiding journals that introduce or increase their APCs. Examining journals that introduced an APC 4-5 years after launch or when flipping from a subscription model to immediate open access model showed no evidence that APC introduction reduced article volumes. Multilevel modelling of APC sensitivity across 319 journals published by the four largest APC-funded dedicated commercial open access publishers (BMC, Frontiers, MDPI, and Hindawi) revealed that from 2012 to 2018 higher APCs were actually associated with increased article volumes. These findings indicate that APC hyperinflation is not suppressed through market competition and author choice. Instead, demand for scholarly journal publications may be more similar to demand for necessities, or even prestige goods, which will support APC hyperinflation to the detriment of researchers, institutions, and funders.

 

Keywords: open access ,   author choice ,   journal selection ,   article processing charge ,   price sensitivity ,   hyperinflation                                                                                                                                                  

Link:

https://www.liberquarterly.eu/article/10.18352/lq.10280/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » flavoursofopenscience's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.costs oa.prices oa.liber oa.serials_crisis oa.fees oa.business_models oa.journals oa.plan_s oa.conversions oa.incentives oa.economics_of

Date tagged:

05/10/2019, 06:36

Date published:

05/10/2019, 11:19