Thank you for the clarification, Ross.
To clarify further, from PeerJ's website: the current fee for lifetime membership is $399 - $499 based on the number of articles to be covered (a 4 to 5-fold increase from the original price; and "All authors of a paper require a membership or a single APC charge must be paid instead". (From: https://peerj.com/pricing/) Based on your information on APC per se, PeerJ has increased its APC from 695 USD to 1095 USD. Thiw would be an increase of 58% (time frame not provided). I can confirm the current fee from the PeerJ website, however I do not have historical data for the 695. According to my DOAJ 2016 spreadsheet, 99 USD was listed as the APC for PeerJ in 2016, 1095 in 2017. Assuming PeerJ staff input this data in the DOAJ application process, this is the source of the misunderstanding. This reflects what I would describe as a limitation on what we can realistically expect from DOAJ. Many journals have complex models, pricing in multiple currencies, etc., so asking for "the APC" as if it were a single amount in a single currency oversimplifies the situation and risks more such misunderstandings. DOAJ does important work; I would like to see it refocus on its work as a directory, connecting people to all these OA journals and articles. A yes/no about publication fees and a link to further information would be sufficient from my perspective. Perhaps a representative from PeerJ would like to clarify further? best, Heather Morrison Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa heather.morri...@uottawa.ca https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706 ________________________________ From: Ross Mounce <ross.mou...@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, April 16, 2018 10:59 AM To: Heather Morrison Cc: scholc...@lists.ala.org; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ) Dear Heather, I find it extremely misleading that you assert that PeerJ has had a "tenfold price increase" in a discussion about APCs. The $99 USD you quote as the original price is not and never was an APC. You are comparing apples and oranges. The $99 offer was a limited-time-only promotional price for an individual 'Basic' lifetime membership, which as I understand it would only allow a person to submit a single paper, one per year for 'free', if all authors also had personal memberships (as part of the lifetime membership model). The $99 offer was available from launch until Feb 22, 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20160714195726/https://peerj.com/pricing/ After Feb 22, 2016 the Basic lifetime membership price increased to $199 The present day Basic lifetime membership price is $399, which is only four times the original promotional pricing, not "tenfold". It is not at all valid to compare the membership model with the APC model because under the APC-model you pay and you get one article for that one APC. Whereas under the membership model, you could potentially (if they pass peer review) publish many multiple articles for that single membership payment over the course of many years. The exact value for money is therefore dependent upon how many times the author uses their PeerJ membership. The first true APC-style pricing PeerJ offered was for an APC of $695 which covered articles with any number of authors, whether they had paid-for PeerJ memberships or not. Today, the PeerJ APC price is $1,095 which is certainly not a "tenfold" increase on the initial APC of $695. FWIW I bought myself a PeerJ Basic lifetime membership for $99 years ago and I'm delighted I did. Kind regards, Ross On 13 April 2018 at 17:14, Heather Morrison <heather.morri...@uottawa.ca<mailto:heather.morri...@uottawa.ca>> wrote: Following is a summary of recent APC changes for 4 publishers, prepared on request but posted in case this might be of interest to anyone else. In brief, each publisher appears to be following a different pricing strategy ranging from flat pricing over many years with one rare exception, to a tenfold increase from 2016 - 2017. BioMedCentral: mixed picture * 269 journals with numeric data 2017 and 2018 (April 4 sampling date both years) * 20 with price increases of 2% - 83% (30 - 620 GBP) * 5 with price decreases of 1% - 15% (15 - 205 GBP) * Of interest: 25 journals with no publication fee (appears to be society / university sponsorship) * Of concern: 44 journals with "title not found": some will reflect earlier title drop Hindawi April 2016 - November 2017: mixed picture, price increases a bit concerning * 281 journals with numeric data for 2016 and 2017 (including 0 = free for now*) * 99 journals have price increases ranging from 14 - 108% (100% = price has doubled), increases of 250 - 650 USD * 115 journals have no change in pricing * 45 journals have price decreases of 6 - 25%, 50 - 100 USD * Of interest: 230 Predecessor journals (ISRN series): good practice * Of concern: 186 title not found (not limited to 2017), excluding predecessor *Rotating free journals: 5 of the 281 journals were free in 2016; 1 is still free, the other 4 have APCs of 1250 - 1750 USD. 17 journals that had an APC in 2016 were free in 2017. Paul Peters sent an e-mail explaining this strategy a few years ago. PLOS ONE: flat pricing with one exception >From 2014 - 2018, there has been only one price change for PLOS journals: PLOS >ONE was $1,350 USD in 2014 and is $1,495 USD today. The sample date was >December 2017, a visual scan confirms the same prices are in effect as of >April 13, 2018. PeerJ: tenfold price increase from 2016 - 2017 (99 USD - 1,095 USD); new journal PeerJ Computer Science is 895 USD. See also yesterday's post Frontiers: 40% of journals have price increases from 18 - 31%<https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/04/12/frontiers-40-journals-have-apc-increases-of-18-31-from-2017-to-2018/>. Blog post link (text is the same): https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/04/13/recent-apc-price-changes-for-4-publishers-bmc-hindawi-plos-peerj/ best, Heather Morrison Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa heather.morri...@uottawa.ca<mailto:heather.morri...@uottawa.ca> https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706 -- -- -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/- Ross Mounce www.rossmounce.co.uk<http://rossmounce.co.uk/> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
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