BMCapc2013.xls (246.5 kB)

BioMedCentral APC fees - a comparison between 2012 & 2013

dataset

posted on 2013-01-05, 04:22 authored by Ross MounceRoss Mounce

I noticed APC's have risen at many BMC journals.

Luckily I had data from last year saved on my computer to compare the new prices with.

Of the 97 journals I've compared here (not all of them), the mean price increase is just over 5%.

To be fair to BMC, some of the biggest price hikes appear to be from society journals e.g. Journal of Physiological Anthropology (An official journal of the Japan Society of Physiological Anthropology) and thus the price hike is probably the society decision rather than BMC's doing. Still... prices have risen :S

Kudos though to Malaria Journal for actually decreasing its APC by over 6% . Perhaps this is because there is strong competition in this subject area from other OA journals like The MalariaWorld Journal (http://www.malariaworld.org/mwj)

In my haste to upload this data, I also included data on SpringerOpen APC prices from 2012 in Sheet 2 and Hindawi APC prices from 2012 in Sheet 3. Thanks to Richard Poynder for spotting this!

At some point I may update this spreadsheet to compare 2012 & 2013 prices of these publishers too (or you're welcome to do this yourself if you wish - that's the joy of Open Data) :)