Dear Heather, It is good to see that pricing of OA publishers is closely monitored and observed. In our case, however, your accusations are incorrect. We have not doubled or even tripled the article processing charges as you have stated in your email and your blog post.
To understand the changes in our pricing, it is essential to understand our publishing model: Copernicus Publications publishes two types of journals: Let’s focus on the 18 of the 38 journals we publish that apply Interactive Public Peer Review as those are the ones that had their prices changed. Interactive Public Peer Review is a two-stage publication process that involves the publication of the author’s manuscript as a discussion paper in an online and open-access discussion forum. The referee reports as well as additional comments are published there in addition to part of the peer-review process (http://publications.copernicus.org/services/public_peer_review.html). From 2001 to2015 we typeset these discussion papers and the article processing charges (APCs) were based on this “first” publication, not on the final revised paper. In January 2016, we changed the publication and accounting process for all journals applying Interactive Public Peer Review. There were two main reasons for this. On the one hand, we do not typeset the discussion papers anymore. This should help to make clear that the discussion papers are rather preprints and not the versions of record. On the other hand, the practice of charging for the discussion papers was especially difficult for funders since they usually only fund final papers (accepted after the completion of the peer-review process). Thereby, the APCs have to be paid once the final revised paper is published. Regarding the article processing charges, the old discussion-paper style resulted in three times more pages than the classic manuscript style, and tables and figures were counted as extra pages (due to the discussion-paper format) when calculating the total cost of publishing a paper. Here is an example of this former model: A manuscript contains 10 pages with 57,000 characters, 2 figures, and 1 table. The discussion paper will have 30 pages text + 1 page table + 2 pages figures. For Category 2, this will result in 33 pages × €25 = €825 net + 19% German VAT. In the new model, the APCs were adjusted to account for the fact that they are based on the final article page rather than on the discussion paper page. The overall costs of publishing a paper have essentially remained the same because there are three times fewer pages in a paper in classic manuscript style than in one in discussion-paper style. Here is the example above in the new payment model: A manuscript contains 10 pages with 57,000 characters, and an additional page with 2 figures and 1 table. For Category 2, this will result in approx. 11 pages final revised paper × €75 = €825 net + 19% German VAT. These changes are clearly and transparently stated on our websites (thank you for linking to them) and were explained to authors, editors, and referees in press releases and community mailings. Thus saying that our prices have increased by 200% is blatantly incorrect. It compares apples to oranges. For further clarification, 24 of our journals have APCs. All these journals are owned by learned societies or scientific institutions. For seven journals APCs are waived by the owners of these journals. For some journals there are no intentions to introduce APCs; for others the owners are planning to implement fees in the future. If fees are introduced, this usually happens in two steps. Three journals are financed via conferences. For three journals Copernicus waives the fees. In addition, we have four journals on our website which either ceased publication or were transferred to another publisher. Openness and transparency is very important to us and we know that we do things differently than other publishers. If you have any questions on our pricing scheme or on any other aspect of our work, we are happy to answer them. Best regards, Xenia **************************************************** Copernicus.org Meetings & Open Access Publications Dr. Xenia van Edig Business Development Copernicus GmbH Bahnhofsallee 1e 37081 Göttingen Germany Phone: +49 551 90 03 39 18 Fax: +49 551 90 03 39 90 18 http://www.copernicus.org @copernicus_org **************************************************** Copernicus Gesellschaft mbH USt-IdNr.: DE216566440 Based in Göttingen, Germany Registered in HRB 131 298 County Court Göttingen Managing Director Thies Martin Rasmussen **************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Silke Hartmann Sent: 06 Jul 2016 07:44 To: Xenia van Edig Subject: FW: [GOAL] 12 Copernicus journals tripled (or quadrupled) OA page charges this year -----Original Message----- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison Sent: 05 Jul 2016 18:22 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] 12 Copernicus journals tripled (or quadrupled) OA page charges this year Highlights On June 1, 2016, German-based commercial open access publisher Copernicus endorsed OA2020 <http://www.copernicus.org/news_and_press/2016-06-01_copernicus-publications-endorses-oa2020.html>, an “an international initiative to support the swift, smooth, and scholarly oriented transformation of journals from print subscription to open-access publishing”. Half of Copernicus’ journals (12) for which we have numeric data for both 2015 and 2016 tripled or in some cases quadrupled their page charges from 2015 to 2016. Coincidence? The rest of this group of journals (10 journals) showed no change in price or modest increases. There were 18 journals for which I found no data with which to compare. Of these, 1 is clearly sponsored and free of charge; 6 are “currently waived”; 4 are “cost not specified”, i.e. the website indicates a charge will be applied but the amount is not given; 3 are “no cost found”, i.e. presumably free but no clear language to confirm; 3 are “title not found” and 1 title that was free last year began to implement charges in 2016. Following are comments: in brief, the price changes illustrate what I call the volatility of the market suggesting it may be too early for OA2020 as pricing is not stable, and I suggest that the topics of many of the journals which touch on things like drinking water quality, climate change and ocean science, would support an argument for public sponsorship of research dissemination in these areas that are important public priorities in the present and near future. Full data is available in charges below. Details and data: https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/07/05/12-copernicus-journals-tripled-page-charges-this-year/ best, -- Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ heather.morri...@uottawa.ca _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
