Jan Erik, Heather, There are a number of factors that can be at play here. I think it's reasonable to suspect that as a journal becomes more established - becoming better known, more trusted and potentially having greater kudos - that submission rates increase, and that may well impact on rejection rates. Costs that then have to be recovered from a proportionally decreasing number of accepted articles. It may even be an editorial policy to become more selective.
But you also need to look at the absolute comparison to the market, not just the changes over time - $1300 (allowing for inflation and membership) is only slightly more than the cost of publishing in PLoS ONE. And $2155 is still lower than any of the selective PLoS journals (significantly in the case of the the higher prestige titles). So compared to the rates of a not-for-profit selective journal, the current fees not out of line. That suggests that the initial fees were much more a promotional rate, rather than any attempt to reflect the true costs of the journal. And if you look at the journal itself, it only managed to publish articles in every month for the first time in 2012. So it's only in the last couple of years that it can be said to be established enough to transition from a promotional / establishment period. The same analysis on the long established BioMed Central titles would likely show a far less dramatic growth of charges in the last 3 years. Regards, G On 28 February 2014 11:43, Frantsvåg Jan Erik <jan.e.frants...@uit.no>wrote: > Interesting numbers! > > > > Have you investigated if some of this increase could be explained by an > increased rejection rate? - this would be an acceptable explanation, in my > opinion. > > > > The suspicion is, of course, that this could be one result of e.g. the > RCUK OA policy, which creates a less competitive market and better > conditions for generating super-profits. > > > > I think it was Guédon who asked why currency fluctuations always led to > price increases ... J > > > > Best, > > Jan Erik > > > > Jan Erik Frantsvåg > > Open Access adviser > > The University Library of Tromsø > > phone +47 77 64 49 50 > > e-mail jan.e.frants...@uit.no > > > http://en.uit.no/ansatte/organisasjon/ansatte/person?p_document_id=43618&p_dimension_id=88187 > > Publications: http://tinyurl.com/6rycjns > > > > > > > > > > *Fra:* goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] *På > vegne av* Heather Morrison > *Sendt:* 28. februar 2014 00:54 > *Til:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > *Emne:* [GOAL] The dramatic growth of BioMedCentral's open access article > processing charges > > > > Thanks to the University of Ottawa's open sharing of their author fund > data, I've been able to calculate that over the past few years there is > evidence that BMC is raising prices at rates far beyond inflation (and far > beyond what could be accounted for through currency fluctuations). > > > > Details are posted here: > > > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-dramatic-growth-of-biomedcentral.html > > > > Note that this data reflects BMC practices and cannot be generalized to > open access publishing as a whole. Public Library of Science, for example, > has achieved a 23% surplus in the same time frame without increasing their > OA article processing charges at all. > > > > best, > > > > -- > Dr. Heather Morrison > Assistant Professor > École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies > University of Ottawa > > Desmarais 111-02 > > 613-562-5800 ext. 7634 > http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html > heather.morri...@uottawa.ca > > > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > >
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