RESEARCH ARTICLE
A study of open access journals using article processing charges
Article first published online: 6 JUL 2012
DOI: 10.1002/asi.22673
© 2012 ASIS&T
Issue
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Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Volume 63, Issue 8, pages 1485–1495, August 2012
Additional Information
How to Cite
Solomon, D. J. and Björk, B.-C. (2012), A study of open access journals using article processing charges. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 63: 1485–1495. doi: 10.1002/asi.22673
Publication History
- Issue published online: 25 JUL 2012
- Article first published online: 6 JUL 2012
- Manuscript Revised: 14 FEB 2012
- Manuscript Accepted: 14 FEB 2012
- Manuscript Received: 16 DEC 2011
- Abstract
- Article
- References
- Cited By
Keywords:
- publishing
Article processing charges (APCs) are a central mechanism for funding open access (OA) scholarly publishing. We studied the APCs charged and article volumes of journals that were listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals as charging APCs. These included 1,370 journals that published 100,697 articles in 2010. The average APC was $906 U.S. dollars (USD) calculated over journals and $904 USD calculated over articles. The price range varied between $8 and $3,900 USD, with the lowest prices charged by journals published in developing countries and the highest by journals with high-impact factors from major international publishers. Journals in biomedicine represent 59% of the sample and 58% of the total article volume. They also had the highest APCs of any discipline. Professionally published journals, both for profit and nonprofit, had substantially higher APCs than journals published by societies, universities, or scholars/researchers. These price estimates are lower than some previous studies of OA publishing and much lower than is generally charged by subscription publishers making individual articles OA in what are termed hybrid journals.