Determinants of article processing charges for hybrid and gold open access journals
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-09-2021-0098 |
| Published date | 23 August 2022 |
| Date | 23 August 2022 |
| Pages | 121-129 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Library & information services,Lending,Document delivery,Collection building & management,Stock revision,Consortia |
| Author | Sumiko Asai |
Determinants of article processing charges for
hybrid and gold open access journals
Sumiko Asai
School of Political Science and Economics, Meiji Daigaku, Chiyoda-ku, Japan
Abstract
Purpose –While the number of hybrid journals has increased with the conversion from subscription journals, art icle processing charges (APCs) have
not been examined as frequently as gold open access journals. This study compared the factors affecting APCs for hybrid and gold open access
journals by formulating a charge equation.
Design/methodology/approach –This study examined the APCs for 1,354 hybrid and gold open access journals in the Springer imprint. Using the
ordinary least squares method, it investigated the determinants of charges, including the relationship between subscription prices and APCs for
hybrid journals.
Findings –The results revealed that the charges set by hybrid journals were higher than those set by gold open access journals by US$1,620, after
controlling for other variables. A reason could be the oligopolistic market structure of the leading publishers. Although the publisher imprint set the
APCs based on the journal characteristics, the difference in the determinants of the charges between the two journal types may be due to the
business models specific to the journal types.
Research limitations/implications –The findings suggested that policymakers must consider the market power of leading publishers to establi sh
a healthy scholarly communication market.
Originality/value –This study examined the relationship between subscription prices and charges for hybrid journals as well as t he determinants of
charges for both journal types, considering various characteristics of individual journals.
Keywords Market power, Article processing charge, Gold open access journal, Hybrid journal, Springer imprint, Subscription journal
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The development of open access journals can be attributed to
the increased internet penetration,rising prices for subscription
journals and the idea that free access to peer-reviewed journal
literature accelerates research (Budapest Open Access
Initiative, 2002). Moreover, several funders, such as UK
Research and Innovation (formerly Research Councils UK)
and cOAlition S (a consortium of research funders that
established Plan S), mandate that authors publish funded
research in open access journals. Accordingly, leading
publishers have launched fully open accessjournals called gold
open access journals and converted their subscription journals
to hybrid journals, which provide authors with open access
options. Whereas hybrid journals usually have both print and
electronic versions, gold open access articles are electronically
distributed.
Authors and their research institutes must pay article
processing charges (APCs) to publish open access articles in
APC-funded gold open access journals and hybrid journals.
Asai (2021) and Khoo (2019) reported that APCs for gold
open access journals tend to increase with time, which raises
the financial burden on authors and their institutes.
Furthermore, Asai (2019,2020)andSiler and Frenken (2020)
examined the factors affecting the levelsof APCs for gold open
access journals by formulatingan APC equation and found that
APCs were higher for journals with high citation scores.
However, due to the lack of data on most publishers, their
analysis did not consider the demand for journals, which may
determine APCs.Therefore, there is room to elaborate on these
studies. One purpose of the current study was to examine the
determinants of APCs usingthe number of article downloads; a
higher number of article downloads represents greater journal
demand from readers.
Over the past severalyears, the number of hybrid journals has
increased (Björk, 2017;Universities UK, 2017), but the
research on APCs for hybrid journals is still inadequate. This
could be because many hybrid journals were initially
subscription journals published by the “Big 5”leading for-
profit publishers –Elsevier, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor &
Francis and Wiley (Kim and Park, 2020). The hybrid journal
market has not changed significantly when compared with the
gold open access journal market with several newly launched
entries (e.g. PLOS). Moreover,whereas most articles in hybrid
journals are closed, all articles in gold open access journals are
freely accessible. Therefore, researchers of open access tend to
The current issue and full text archiveof this journal is available on Emerald
Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2398-6247.htm
Information Discovery and Delivery
51/2 (2023) 121–129
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 2398-6247]
[DOI 10.1108/IDD-09-2021-0098]
This work was supported by the Japan society for the promotion of science
(JSPS) KAKENHI (Grant number 20K01663).
Received 7 September 2021
Revised 6 November 2021
24 February 2022
29 April 2022
Accepted 31 July 2022
121
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